What idea from the Prequels had that Frank feel?


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orald
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Re: THEY REALLY THINK READERS ARE STUPID

Post by orald »

SandChigger wrote:Or Frank didn't discuss this point over Wheaties with his nappy-headed Literary Heir Apparent. :roll:
The official title is known as Na-Author in the Imperium.

Nice self-contradiction you found there, though it also contradicts(how surprisingly! :o ) Ch:D. They already get all her OM in the Agony, no blocking, no constipation. they already affirm the HM origins and don't speculate or postulate or prostate examate.
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Re: THEY REALLY THINK READERS ARE STUPID

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orald wrote:it also contradicts(how surprisingly! :o ) Ch:D.
Contradictions of the original books are just taken for granted now (at least by me), not really worth mentioning. ;)

Especially when they just ignore you when you bring them up.

No, you have to find the internal contradictions, and show that they're sloppy and unprofessional.

The HLP are sheep...ah, listen to them bleat to the Hiker Shepherd's call:

Meh...meh...mediocrity!
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Post by orald »

Hiker Shepherd? The Great Shepherd of the Lhazareen?! :o







*Now you have to read ASoIaF to get the refrences*
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Re: THEY REALLY THINK READERS ARE STUPID

Post by Phaedrus »

SandChigger wrote:Let's back up a minute, shall we? There's something about Murbella breaking through the memory wall that bothers me.

Before she does her walk in the wild with her Keebler Spice Wafers:
But Murbella demanded to know about the other half of her existence, to discover what lay behind the black wall that blocked all Honored Matre paths. Yes, the memories were there, but muddled and disorganized, and they seemed to reach a dead end after only a handful of centuries, as if she had sprung from nowhere.

Were the whores descended from lost and corrupted Reverend Mothers, isolated out in the Scattering, as had been postulated? Had they formed their society with surviving Fish Speakers from the God Emperor's private guard, creating a bureaucracy based on violence and sexual domination?
Then later
Now that Murbella had broken through the black wall in her Other Memories, she understood exactly what the Enemy was and what the Honored Matres had done to provoke them. She knew more about the nature of the Outside Enemy than Odrade, Taraza, or any previous Bene Gesserit leader had ever guessed.

She had lived those lives.

In particular she saw herself as a harsh, ambitious, and successful commander, driving her squadron of ships outward, ever outward. Lenise.
Um...you see the problem here, right?

This Lenise character is an Honored Matre. A woman who lived AFTER the supposed liberation of the Tleilaxu tanks. Why would OM of her have been blocked? She was born and lived (and reproduced, obviously) after any blanking of memory from the tanking could have been in effect. Unless the HMs genetic structure was permanently whacked.

But if their genetic structure is fooked, a few spice wafers and Murbella strainin' like she's got a turd crossways isn't going to break through that, knowharramean?

Too bad they didn't find the piece of paper or file with what Frank had in mind for this (if anything). Or Frank didn't discuss this point over Wheaties with his nappy-headed Literary Heir Apparent. :roll:
For once, I think you're trying too hard. I don't see a contradiction here.

It's completely normal for a RM not to have that kind of access to OM. I'm not sure if it can be accessed by something to do with Keebler Spice Wafers, but remember, only certain RMs, like Odrade, can actually explore their OM at will.

The fact that it contradicts the original books(a blank wall of axlotl tanks as OM doesn't make sense given Murbella saw countless brutalities in her Agony, all through her OM pasts. That's the entire point of the Agony for BG, isn't it? She saw things going back thousands of years, so this BS about "a few centuries" isn't going to cut it, especially if Omnoid is supposed to have advanced that far using STL spaceships. :roll: ) bothers me a lot more than something that's just vague.

However, given those two excerpts, I'll say that this is incredibly vague and not very good writing or plotting. I'm content to criticize them on the fact that they couldn't write a good book outside of Dune.
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Post by SandChigger »

orald wrote:*Now you have to read ASoIaF to get the refrences*
They're on their way from Amazon.
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Re: THEY REALLY THINK READERS ARE STUPID

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Phaedrus wrote:For once, I think you're trying too hard. I don't see a contradiction here.

It's completely normal for a RM not to have that kind of access to OM. I'm not sure if it can be accessed by something to do with Keebler Spice Wafers, but remember, only certain RMs, like Odrade, can actually explore their OM at will.
OK. But in THEIR Duniverse it seems that personae-in-memory (PiM) can come forward and offer up information to RMs. Serena Butler contacting Sheeana is an example of a non-RM PiM doing so.

So what was to prevent this "Lenise" from coming forward, since she lived AFTER the supposed tank block?
However, given those two excerpts, I'll say that this is incredibly vague and not very good writing or plotting. I'm content to criticize them on the fact that they couldn't write a good book outside of Dune.
Ah, don't be too hasty! You have yet to see what they can do in

SMELLHOLE! COMING SOON! :lol:
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Re: THEY REALLY THINK READERS ARE STUPID

Post by Phaedrus »

SandChigger wrote:
Phaedrus wrote:For once, I think you're trying too hard. I don't see a contradiction here.

It's completely normal for a RM not to have that kind of access to OM. I'm not sure if it can be accessed by something to do with Keebler Spice Wafers, but remember, only certain RMs, like Odrade, can actually explore their OM at will.
OK. But in THEIR Duniverse it seems that personae-in-memory (PiM) can come forward and offer up information to RMs. Serena Butler contacting Sheeana is an example of a non-RM PiM doing so.

So what was to prevent this "Lenise" from coming forward, since she lived AFTER the supposed tank block?
Uhm. I don't know. What's to prevent any PiM from doing the same at any time?
However, given those two excerpts, I'll say that this is incredibly vague and not very good writing or plotting. I'm content to criticize them on the fact that they couldn't write a good book outside of Dune.
Ah, don't be too hasty! You have yet to see what they can do in

SMELLHOLE! COMING SOON! :lol:
Yeah, I'm not sure I want to waste my money or my time, although I may try it out, just to see if they write better in their own(ha) universe.
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Re: THEY REALLY THINK READERS ARE STUPID

Post by SandChigger »

Phaedrus wrote:Uhm. I don't know. What's to prevent any PiM from doing the same at any time?
Exactly.

The implication here, though, is that Murbella achieved access to the Lenise memories AFTER she broke through the memory block. That's what I find contradictory.

(Sorry...am I doing a Nebiros here? ;) )
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Post by orald »

The whole BG training for being a RM is to avoid such OM breaking the surface on their own, an to totally prevent anything from trying to take over.
Sure, if a RM is looking through her OM then some might come forward to demand her attention, but I think mostly strong characters like other RMs, not pussifist pushovers like Serena.
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Post by Hunchback Jack »

I know this thread is a month stale, but I just read the "Murbella breaks through the memory block" section in Hunters, and thought I'd pipe up.

Firstly, I like the idea of where the HM came from. It's actually a pretty cool idea, and gives a nice meaning to their name. Also explains why they exterminated the Tleilaxu (although this also might have been explained - dfifferetly - in CH:D; I can't remember).

But, I have to say that this revelation came out of nowhere. All of a sudden, Murbella decides she needs to access her HM OM, and so does it by *trying real hard*? Hmmph. And so we get the origins of HM with no context or dramatic build-up or suspense? Double Hmmph.

Actually, I'm finding the lack of dramatic tension in Hunters to be a problem generally. Everyone just seems to be killing time until either the gholas grow up and get their memories, or until the Enemy arrives. And the ideas that *do* appeal to me (e.g. Edric's solution to obtaining spice from another source) arrives with no preamble. Talks to the oracle-thingy, oracle-thingy says (annoyingly) "there's another source of spice, but I'm not gonna tell you where", three paragraphs later, Bingo! Edric has the solution.

But I've digressed. Stop me before I go on about how many times the HM are called "whores". Oops, too late.

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Post by orald »

Hunchback Jack wrote:Firstly, I like the idea of where the HM came from. It's actually a pretty cool idea, and gives a nice meaning to their name. Also explains why they exterminated the Tleilaxu (although this also might have been explained - dfifferetly - in CH:D; I can't remember).
The HM never wanted to exterminate the BT, they wanted to sabjugate them.
But when they discovered(from intentional BG "leaks") that the BT were making gholas capable of sexual imprinting like themselves, and that they had some FD's among themselves, then they got ticked.
And the rest is, as they say, history.

If they were freed ax-tanks they'd have attacked the BT from the start, not tried to get a peaceful surrender(the whole Waff&HM scene aboard the Ixian no-ship).
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Post by Hunchback Jack »

Oh, well. So much for that idea :).

Thanks, orald. I should go back and read HoD and CH:D to refresh my memory on some of these points (although I might get more depressed).

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Post by SandChigger »

The "whores" was definitely overkill.

It's overuse by the BG characters in particular didn't ring true. Whatever happened to not underestimating your enemy by thinking of them in stereotypical ways? :roll:
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Post by Freakzilla »

SandChigger wrote:The "whores" was definitely overkill.

It's overuse by the BG characters in particular didn't ring true. Whatever happened to not underestimating your enemy by thinking of them in stereotypical ways? :roll:
I got the impression that the BG had seen the HM style of missuse of power so often that it bored them. They were a stereotype to the BG.
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Post by SandChigger »

FH used "whore"

40 times in Heretics
15 times in Chapterhouse
55 times in total

Note the trend. And this final usage, in an exchange between Murbella and Odrade-within:
Oh, you bitch!

I prefer witch. Either is preferable to whore.
The word appears

112 times in Grunters
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More is definitely less.
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Post by Freakzilla »

Sorry, I thought you were saying FH overused it.
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Post by Freakzilla »

After the two sisterhoods merged I don't think it would be good for moral for them to be calling each other witches and whores. Besides, like FH said, eventually they would just be RMs with faster reflexes.
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Post by SandChigger »

One of the failings of Grunters: after umpteen years there still seem to be plenty of HMs running around on Chapterhouse who have not undergone the Agony and become RMs.

The only thing keeping them together at times seem to be those fetching black unitards. :roll:
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Post by Freakzilla »

I think they should have gone with black aba robes with sequined dragons.

(They always had the unitard underneath (in black or grey).)
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Post by A Thing of Eternity »

FH sure did love his unitards/singlesuits. I guess he figured having seperate pants and shirts was innefficient... logical thing is for everyone to wear stretchy one-pieces I guess. :D
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Post by Serkanner »

A Thing of Eternity wrote:FH sure did love his unitards/singlesuits. I guess he figured having seperate pants and shirts was innefficient... logical thing is for everyone to wear stretchy one-pieces I guess. :D
I wonder who's picture he had hanging on the wall in his study when he wrote Dune. Jane Fonda perhaps?
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Post by Hunchback Jack »

bryanvdk wrote:by CH:D the use had dropped off significantly, then it supposedly increases exponentially over the next 10 years or something? wtf
Most of the references in Hunters are not in dialogue or personal reflection, but in the omniscient third-person narrative. So it's a bit hard to tell whether the term reflects BG attitudes, since it's not always used by BGs - or any identifiable character, for that matter. I found that a problem with Hunters generally, incidentally.

I get the impression that BH and KJA really wanted us to still think of the HM as the "bad guys", even though at the end of CH:D, things weren't headed in that direction any longer. In Hunters, Sheanna et al. had no problem with the Handlers basically treating the HM like animals, torturing them and hunting them using Futars. Okay, the Handlers turned out to be "bad guys", too, but the "good guys" didn't bat an eyelash at the extreme treatment. Clearly we're supposed to believe the HMs "deserved it, the whores".

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Post by Mandy »

Yeah, they really wanted us to know that the HM were "whores".. Duncan called them that so many times in ONE chapter I wanted to puke.
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Post by orald »

Oh, you bitch!

I prefer witch. Either is preferable to whore
You forgot the rest of the quote:
Oh no you didn't! *bitchslap*
Oh yea I did! *bitchslap*
*both pulling chairs and wacking eachother and Jerry Springer*
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Post by SandChigger »

A Thing of Eternity wrote:FH sure did love his unitards/singlesuits. I guess he figured having seperate pants and shirts was innefficient... logical thing is for everyone to wear stretchy one-pieces I guess. :D
Oooh...stretchy fabric...I can get into stretchy....

Hell, if it ain't stretchy I CAN'T get into it! :lol:

:shock:
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