SeanF

26 minutes ago, Maltaran said:

The bit where Stilgar was saying how Paul was so modest saying he wasn’t the Lisan Al-Gaib and that proved even more that he was felt very Pythonesque

Yes, I thought that at the time.

The problem is, when you see people in long robes and headscarves, all genuflecting and saying “Messiah”, “Lisan Al Gaib”, “Mahdi”, etc., it’s hard not to think of The Life of Brian.

All we needed was someone angrily saying “What have the Harkonnens ever done for us?”

11 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Apparently US estimates are that Russia lost 14,000 dead and maybe 30,000 all-in casualties to take Avdiivka, but Ukraine's losses were low thousands dead, but more injured. That may track with Zelensky's claim of much lower-than-expected KIA for the war to date (even if he was only counting the definitely-KIA of 31,000 and not probably-KIA-but-unconfirmed figure of more like 45,000). Ukraine is doing an exceptional job of keeping casualties as light as possible given the insane intensity of the combat.

That said, exhaustion and injuries are still a major problem, so they still need a large influx of new troops and replacements.

Russia is sacrificing the equivalent adult male population of a small city, in order to capture ruins.  That is madness.

I’m reminded of Germany at Stalingrad, suffering 3,000 casualties, one day, to advance 20 metres into the Tractor Works.

24 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Lynch's film is definitely campier, but I feel it's much closer to the feel of the books, which can sometimes seem campy. (not to mention, some of the conversations in later Dune books make me feel like I'm in a David Lynch movie).

It wasn’t camp, but while I watched Dune 2, and saw the Fremen prostrating themselves and reciting prophecies, I did want someone to say “He’s not the Messiah, he’s just a naughty boy.”

2 hours ago, YeniAy_Ottoman said:

 

The fact that a region of the Dothraki Sea borders the northern sea does not mean that they live and get used to that snowy and ice-filled cold. There is no information that that part is snowed anyway. Think of it like the Braavos example. The canals are cold enough to freeze, but there is no snow. I remember the Kingdom of Sarnor as being quite fertile despite its location. There was a large inland sea and fertile water resources. In this way, a great kingdom was established there. As they lost their water supply, they slowly began to weaken and gone. The Dothraki did the rest. Currently, almost all cities are in ruins, only the city of Saath continues to exist. The Dothraki do not live here or in the ruined cities. Most of these cities are already in the inner parts of the region.

The Dothraki Sea may possibly resemble the Arabian deserts. Deserts are very hot during the day and cold at night, but... The coldness I'm talking about is not normal coldness. Have they ever experienced the Siberian cold? Have they ever lived in a snow-covered area? No.

You forget that the perception of coldness is relative. To a northerner, the cold experienced by the Dothraki is probably something like springtime. I would like to give an example. I live in the south of Türkiye, Antalya is very hot and the humidity is extremely high during the summer months. In autumn and winter, the average temperature is 19-20 degrees. You have no chance of getting a tan(at least for us). The most beautiful periods of the city.

On the other hand, there is a small city called Bayburt in the north of Türkiye. The average temperature in the summer is 19-20 degrees. My friend who lives there was complaining that her brother's arms were red from the sun, and that they were sweltering in the heat. What does this warmth mean to me? Nothing. So what happens if I invite this friend to Antalya in the summer? She could probably die from the heat (joke).

The human body has the perception of cold and heat depending on the season of the region in which it lives. For this reason, you cannot equate the winter experience of a Dothraki with the winter experience of northerners. 

The comparison between the Dothraki Sea and the North would be similar to that between Ukraine/Southern Russia and Scandinavia below the Arctic Circle, IMHO.

The latter is colder overall, but the former can be very cold in Winter.

5 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

It is kind of funny how American readers of ASoIaF actually parallel Dany's story in Slaver's Bay with the recent American wars. Those are non-parallels.

Daenerys is no super power dominating the world, she is a young girl living in fantasy world. She speaks the same language as the Ghiscari and while there are some religious and cultural differences, they share a similar background (Dothraki culture is really different from Ghiscari and Valyrian culture).

The one, the only issue of contention between them is slavery and the slave trade, especially as practiced by the degenerate Ghiscari.

 

The outside, imperial powers, are New Ghis, Qarth, and Volantis.  The people fighting slavery are the local ex-slaves.

Iraq is a tribal society, divided by religion.  All it has in common with Meereen is that it’s hot.

2 hours ago, YeniAy_Ottoman said:

Turks are people of steppe origin, you may know. I'm a Turk. Central Asia is a truly harsh and challenging geography. Even living in cold places like Siberia, and we hate extreme heat. In this way we are similar to the northerners of Westeros. However, the Central Asian steppes and the Dothraki steppes do not have the same seasonal characteristics. This is the point you are missing.

The regions of Essos, except the northern part, are regions where warm climates prevail, places where snow and snow cold do not prevail... You can even understand this from their clothes. This region is deadly for these people who are not used to the cold and snow of the north.

Parts of the Dothraki Sea abut the Shivering Sea, and also @House Cambodia’s points.

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I have to say by the end of the two movies, I much prefer the Lynch depiction of the Harknonnens. There was something more intimidating and appalling when it came the grossness of the Lynch version. It didn't shy away from the slimeyness, and in some ways the monochrome nature of the latest version made the Harknonnens rather beautiful! Not the aesthetic I would have gone for.

To my mind, Lynch's version came over as caricature, partly because they were almost always screaming at each other, and their minions.  Villeneuve's Harkonnens, while depraved, are a bit more believably evil.  But, yes, the aesthetics of the arena are tremendous.  The musical score for Feyd-Rautha is incredible, too.

Even in the books though, the Harkonnens are too chaotically evil to have survived for centuries.  Nobody would willingly serve them, and those who served them unwillingly would eventually take them down, rather than be sacrificed in one of their sick games. 

1 hour ago, Argonath Diver said:

Villenueve could have delved into Baron's gross incestual fixation for Feyd, but I think for a big tentpole Hollywood release it worked great to have the whole Harkonnen faction depicted as creepy bloodthirsty psychopaths, even if it simplified all of their weird shit going in in Herbert's novels. I'm surprised and happy that a genre film is a colossal success in that it's made bonkers money in a week, on a property that I definitely did not think would ever reach mainstream appeal. 

Not even a big fan of the books but holy damn that Part 2 was superb and I'll see it again in a theater - the Dolby Surround experience was truly effective.

He's got an unhealthy fixation on Paul, too. He doesn't know that he's his grandson, but honestly, I don't think it would make any difference to the Baron, anyway.  The same way, it wouldn't matter to Aegon IV whether his mistress was his own daughter.

@YeniAy_OttomanSteppe peoples, like Dothraki, would be well-used to freezing cold.

On 3/6/2024 at 11:21 AM, Aldarion said:

North is not necessarily a good example because it is geographically massive, and Robb left in a hurry. He basically scoured the nearby lands of troops... for all we know they could have ten thousand men left at the arse end of nowhere that nobody bothered to call up.

Agreed.

3,000 returned North, out of 20,000.  Albeit, many of those losses will have been to desertion, rather than death.

Overall losses in the Riverlands, are probably running well into the hundreds of thousands, due to extensive pillage and foraging.  The vast majority of those are obviously civilians, but young men who might otherwise be available to fight, will be needed to get in the harvest.

Losses in the Westerlands are likely as you state.  Robb’s chevauchee probably did not last long enough to seriously impact food supplies, but losses of soldiers were severe.

The rest of the Seven Kingdoms will be relatively unscathed, but fighting between the Tyrells, Euron, and fAegon/the Dornish, may prove bloody.

4 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

The biggest issue I have is with the portrayal of the Harkonnens actually….they tried making them terrifying in the adaptation whereas they had more black humour in the books and were kinda weasily and cowards , similar to the Freys actually. Also has Frank Herbert himself ever said in an interview the correct way to pronounce Harkonnen ? Is it similar to the lynch or Denis version ? 

My guess is that depicting the Baron’s … appetites, in the film was thought contentious.

9 hours ago, Relic said:

For sure that's her purpose in this movie, but it's sooo heavy handed. Makes all the other Freman look pretty stupid, too.

It’s an open question, though, whether Paul is exploiting the fundamentalists, or if they are exploiting him.  Perhaps both are true.

4 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

I don’t remember who said or how they phrased it, but it’s something like, “you’re entitled to your own opinions but not to your own facts”. 

It’s just that so many don’t agree w/ that, both here and irl.

Yeah, it can be funny! Sort of like watching the coyote in the Roadrunner cartoon run off that cliff again and again and never learn!

Troll threads were better in the past.

We had Catelyn the Monster;  Daenerys The Slut;  Sansa The Psychopath;  and The Slavers Are Just Misunderstood.

8 hours ago, Craving Peaches said:

While true America did not join (or at least it doesn't seem to have been the main motivating factor) to stop what the Nazis were doing. They joined because they wanted to cut Japan down to size and because they didn't want Soviet hegemony over Europe. If they were so concerned with the moral issue they would have joined the war earlier... In this respect Daenerys is much more sympathetic, because her fight in Slaver's Bay is totally motivated by her moral compass and not her geopolitical interest, desire for power etc. Which is why I think Daenerys should not bother with Westeros aside from beating the Others, and that she should focus on Slaver's Bay to ensure there is a good system to replace slavery so that it doesn't come back.

To be fair, in real life, most countries, and factions, fight for reasons of honour, interest, or fear.

You do get purely altruistic fighters, like the International Brigades, and true believers are any side’s dream, but they are unusual.

3 hours ago, A wilding said:

Been spending a few days mulling over the film and discussing it. It was a really impressive visual and auditory spectacle. Even the ridiculous speed of the worms worked. Some of the changes from the book also worked really well (Paul and Jessica being at odds, Chani as the voice of reason increasingly backing away from Paul). I could accept the junking of most of my favourite subplot of Feyd-Rautha vs the Baron (it might well turn up in an extended version anyway). There was a lot of good stuff. And yet we both walked out of the cinema disappointed.

I think it comes down to a general feeling that the last part of the film was weak, especially in plot. The Emperor was not so much weak as a nonentity. Apparently the Reverend Mother Mohiam wanted to wipe out the Atreides all along?! The Sardaukar were suddenly deemphasised (I think the only time they were named was when Paul said to kill the ones in the throne room). Paul's pre-battle planning over a hasty sketch map ("you attack from this side, you attack from that side") was silly, especially as the actual plan was to blast a hole in the shield wall to let the storm in and then shock the defenders by attacking on worms. Plus the use of the nukes needed to be better explained and justified, especially as they did obviously kill some Sardaukar. Paul's sudden threat to destroy the spice by using the nukes felt off, why did he even make it, especially knowing that the Great Houses were going to turn him down? Etc.

Final gripe. I really hate villains who randomly kill minions just to show us how evil they are. I might just about have accepted Rabban doing it, since he was portrayed as only borderline competent and with anger management issues, but not all the Harkonnens. The trope was subverted as long ago as The Empire Strikes Back for heaven's sake!

But I guess we will probably go and see part 3.

Killing people for shits and giggles is part of the Harkonnen modus operandi in the novel.

But, I accept it’s unrealistic.  It actually makes it safer for people to plot against you, rather than remain loyal.

On 3/5/2024 at 8:16 PM, Kalbear said:

Nah. Both in the movie and the book he knows that his ascendancy will be anything but peaceful. He is threatening the use of the nukes (in the movie) knowing that the response will be what it is, because he can entirely see the future here. He knows exactly what will happen with this course of action. 

Presumably if he didn't threaten with the nukes something else would happen; probably an invasion of Arrakis itself. 

I'm more and more inclined to agree. An interesting parallel from the first and the second movie - in the first movie there's a sequence where we see Paul going full-on ninja against Sardukar stabbing all sorts of people and wearing these really cool-ass modern stillsuits. In Dune 2 we see Chani do the exact same sequence of moves and poses against the Sardukar in her battle. Chani starts the story of Dune by asking as the Harkonnen leave who will oppress the Fremen next, with a great jumpshot of Paul in the very next shot. 

There are a bunch of differences between the book and the movie that make me think this may be going...well, into a very different place than the books. Spoilers for the next books follow.

  Hide contents

Chani not being pregnant or in love with Paul (she drops her blue ribbon, the signifier in Fremen of love) is one, but the biggest one is that Paul does not tell Irulan that she will be his bride but he will never father children of her and that Chani will be his consort is a huge deal to me. To me, this is Paul knowingly choosing the path where Chani actively opposes him and potentially ends him. Obviously that would be a very different story! And presumably that would also mean no Leto, no Golden Path, nothing like that. Paul telling Chani over and over how he is being set up as the messiah but he isn't one - and then choosing that path and pissing her off so much - is another sign of this conscious pushing of her. 

I could see her being the ultimate user of the Stone Burners against Paul, for instance. 

I think, conceptually, I really love it. I like Chani both being used this way and having a lot more action in the story, I like Paul fighting in some way against his fate and the long prophecy, I like them illustrating this is just another means of oppression of the Fremen...but it goes on trackless ground if they go this way, and I can see a lot of purists getting real pissed off. It could also be really shitty! It's not like Dune Messiah was a particular masterpiece anyway, but diverting significantly and doing his own thing may not be great. 

And, of course, doing it that way pretty much kills any other stories down the road - at least ones based on the novels. 

 

I enjoyed the Chani storyline, too.  I agree that it would make sense for her to be an antagonist to Paul.

30 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Yeah, I got that, hence my comment on… other internet spaces. I’m gonna leave it there. 

Social media actually enables the terminally thick.

You can give a detailed answer, backed up by sources, and get the response;

“Yeah well, that’s just your opinion.”

6 hours ago, Ran said:

This thread had gone very far from discussing the books, folks.

Discussions about Dany so often do veer into real-world politics, I've noticed.

Dynasties striving for mastery, in a medieval world, is now so far removed from peoples' experience that it's not really a contentious subject, even if the Richard III Society passionately defend his innocence.

Debates over how far violence is justified, or productive in fighting tyranny, have a much more contemporary relevance.

26 minutes ago, Lord of Raventree Hall said:

North Korea might be a horrible place to live, but there is no holocaust happening in North Korea right now. They aren't systematically murdering their own people. Do you get it? 

No holocaust, but there was no holocaust under Franco or Salazar.  The North Korean government is utterly without mercy towards its own people.

Stalin and his executioners mostly seem to have had the mentality of mob bosses "sorry man, but it is what is" - bullet through the head.  The Nazis liked to mock, degrade, torment their victims, while telling each other how exciting it all was.  So, there is that difference between the two.  But, in Mao's China, mocking and degrading the victims was common enough.

3 hours ago, Lord of Raventree Hall said:

Nah. You can’t. You want to and you want to indoctrinate others to think like you, but you actually can’t. Fascists by their very nature seek war, control, and an othering of some people (which they use as an enemy to unite against). No the anti fascists were not as bad as the fascists and they never will be, as fascism is the single most destructive/evil political ideology probably in world history. But keep peddling your propoganda. I’ll be here to give a counterargument to it. 

There have been organisations though, like the Khmer Rouge, the Shining Path, or the Red Brigades, which claim to be fighting fascism, but which are utterly vile.

If you wished to nominate someone for the title of most evil man in history, Pol Pot and Ta Mok would be near the top.  Over the course of three years, they killed 25-33% of the population, as an experiment.

1 hour ago, House Cambodia said:

It seems to me, most of the discussion in this thread is attempting to solve the unsolvable. It's telling to me that GRRM entangled himself in a Meereenese KNOT. The problem is analogous with real-life modern 'history' of a sort GRRM is conscious of, particularly concerning US foreign policy. The regimes of the Taliban, Saddam Hussein and Muamar Gaddafi were atrocious, yet blundering in with no exit plan or strategy to 'fix' societies once the heads had been lopped off resulted in Americans committing atrocities themselves, leaving societies in an even worse state than they had been before intervening, and stuck in 'forever wars' that were supposed to last only a few weeks.

Would it have been prudent never to have intervened? Should we ignore the plight of Gazans? Should we have left Ukraine to Putin's invasion? I'm not suggesting answers - my point is Dany has found herself in a complex situation with no easy answers, and GRRM himself has got himself stuck in a 'mire' that may well take as long to extricate himself from as US troops from Iraq. And anyone who supposes they can solve Dany's problem in a post, a thread or even a blog is unlikely to convince me.

Finally, it shouldn't need stating, but to one poster it needs stressing that you cannot suppose that quotes from an unreliable, highly fallible point-of-view fictitious narrator with a very limited perspective somehow reflects what the author truly believes!

As we know, life doesn’t suddenly become great for ex-slaves in places where the institution has been abolished, in real life.  They still face discrimination and economic disadvantage, after abolition.

But, it’s still better that the institution be abolished than retained.

Just now, SeanF said:

I’m not sure I agree.  Genghis Khan believed he’d been appointed to rule by Eternal Heaven.  But, he still planned his campaigns meticulously.

I think you fall flat on your face when you think being chosen by God, or being racially superior, means that you don’t have to put in hard thinking and hard work.
 

19 minutes ago, maarsen said:

Every leader who believes he is appointed by a God to lead the lesser beings is truly guilty of delusional behaviour. No surprise they fail, and badly.

I’m not sure I agree.  Genghis Khan believed he’d been appointed to rule by Eternal Heaven.  But, he still planned his campaigns meticulously.

I think you fall flat on your face when you think being chosen by God, or being racially superior, means that you don’t have to put in hard thinking and hard work.
 

My own view is that the Dornish hardliners, and Jon Connington, will put Tommen, Myrcella, and Margaery to death, along with anyone else associated with the a regime.

So, the Tyrells and some other Reach and Western lords will switch to Daenerys.

24 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Surprising no one except Ser Scot, the Supreme Court rules that Colorado and other states cannot keep Trump off the ballot for committing insurrection. 

By 9-0, although the three liberal justices dissent from some points of the majority ruling.

On 3/3/2024 at 6:22 AM, Lord Varys said:

 

The only time when the Meereenese elite were still cautious was while the dragons were still a real factor and Dany had not yet shown her willingness to compromise everything in exchange for the promise of peace. Then they smelled weakness and blood in the water and decided to destroy her one cut a time.

The Meereenese elite are evil and depraved, but unlike the rulers of Astapor and Meereen, they’re clever.