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Re: Scytale - Face Dancer to Master

Posted: 08 Jul 2009 12:59
by A Thing of Eternity
[
Freakzilla wrote:I'm not sure if this has been suggested yet...
In Dune Messiah, Scytale pretty much tells RM Mohiam she's ugly and calls Edric the Guild Navigator a fool. IMO no ordinary face dancer would get away with this kind of behaivior. Scytale had to be a BT Master.
My theory is that the BT made a face dancer-ghola of Master Scytale specifically as a weapon against Paul and those cells were incorporated into his next master-ghola incarnation.
:?:
Maybe, or - at that point FH hadn't yet fleshed out the idea of face dancers as drones working under the masters. Or, he intended them to have started off as regular members of the tleilaxu, and only over the next thousands of years were they turned into the drones we see later in the series.

Re: Scytale - Face Dancer to Master

Posted: 08 Jul 2009 13:10
by Freakzilla
A Thing of Eternity wrote:[
Freakzilla wrote:I'm not sure if this has been suggested yet...
In Dune Messiah, Scytale pretty much tells RM Mohiam she's ugly and calls Edric the Guild Navigator a fool. IMO no ordinary face dancer would get away with this kind of behaivior. Scytale had to be a BT Master.
My theory is that the BT made a face dancer-ghola of Master Scytale specifically as a weapon against Paul and those cells were incorporated into his next master-ghola incarnation.
:?:
Maybe, or - at that point FH hadn't yet fleshed out the idea of face dancers as drones working under the masters. Or, he intended them to have started off as regular members of the tleilaxu, and only over the next thousands of years were they turned into the drones we see later in the series.
Well, I'm trying to assume he had. It's too easy to say the idea evolved. :roll:

Re: Scytale - Face Dancer to Master

Posted: 08 Jul 2009 14:21
by A Thing of Eternity
Freakzilla wrote:
A Thing of Eternity wrote:[
Freakzilla wrote:I'm not sure if this has been suggested yet...
In Dune Messiah, Scytale pretty much tells RM Mohiam she's ugly and calls Edric the Guild Navigator a fool. IMO no ordinary face dancer would get away with this kind of behaivior. Scytale had to be a BT Master.
My theory is that the BT made a face dancer-ghola of Master Scytale specifically as a weapon against Paul and those cells were incorporated into his next master-ghola incarnation.
:?:
Maybe, or - at that point FH hadn't yet fleshed out the idea of face dancers as drones working under the masters. Or, he intended them to have started off as regular members of the tleilaxu, and only over the next thousands of years were they turned into the drones we see later in the series.
Well, I'm trying to assume he had. It's too easy to say the idea evolved. :roll:
True, I like to speculate on things like this and make it all neat and tidy - but if we don't sometimes at least examine the possibility that the idea just evolved then we're not much better than those who come up with crazy explanations for KJA's inconsistancies. :(

Re: Scytale - Face Dancer to Master

Posted: 08 Jul 2009 16:00
by SandChigger
It doesn't matter if the idea is "easy" or not if it's right.

It's obvious that FH's conception of space-folding, Navigators, and gholas evolved over time, no? Why not the Masters?

Re: Scytale - Face Dancer to Master

Posted: 08 Jul 2009 16:03
by Freakzilla
SandChigger wrote:It doesn't matter if the idea is "easy" or not if it's right.

It's obvious that FH's conception of space-folding, Navigators, and gholas evolved over time, no? Why not the Masters?
I'm not saying it didn't, and you forgot OM. I'm just saying there could be other explainations.

Re: Scytale - Face Dancer to Master

Posted: 08 Jul 2009 16:13
by SandChigger
Freakzilla wrote:you forgot OM
Nyah! :roll:

Back to your underground hole with you! :twisted: :P

Re: Scytale - Face Dancer to Master

Posted: 13 Nov 2009 05:55
by Anathema
Thread resurrection...

I don't like the "genetic promotion" theory, as Waff talks of face dancers as if they have no soul. Promoting a lowly face dancer to a master would be like the Catholic church decreeing that the Pope's dog has been awarded a soul, and a seat on the college of cardinals (plus one of those big hats)

I think it's more something like this:
Freakzilla wrote:I'm not sure if this has been suggested yet...

In Dune Messiah, Scytale pretty much tells RM Mohiam she's ugly and calls Edric the Guild Navigator a fool. IMO no ordinary face dancer would get away with this kind of behaivior. Scytale had to be a BT Master.

My theory is that the BT made a face dancer-ghola of Master Scytale specifically as a weapon against Paul and those cells were incorporated into his next master-ghola incarnation.

:?:
Or, that the face dancers during Muad'Dibs era were still considered equals to "normal" tleilaxu and that as they were further "developed" they were "devolved" into tools.

Re: Scytale - Face Dancer to Master

Posted: 13 Nov 2009 06:14
by Redstar
For an in-universe explanation, I side with Freakzilla, though I think it's very likely Frank just wanted to handle them differently as the series went on.

Another in-universe explanation is that Face Dancers were once treated as equals, even as late as DM, but once ghola-memories could be awakened Tleilaxu society developed into a more rigid class structure. Since Scytale had first-hand experience with this revelation, he promoted himself to Master before the casteing of Face Dancers in general, or he worked on creating that structure.

Re: Scytale - Face Dancer to Master

Posted: 13 Nov 2009 06:47
by Lundse
Anathema wrote:Or, that the face dancers during Muad'Dibs era were still considered equals to "normal" tleilaxu and that as they were further "developed" they were "devolved" into tools.
That's what I always assumed. The face dancers before Waff's time were mostly servants, but not entirely without personality or will.

Scytale is "a Tleilaxu of the Face Dancers", thinking of himself: "He was the human chameleon, a Face Dancer, and the shape he wore now invited others to judge him too lightly."
First, this means a face dancer can indeed have intelligence and will. And, from Scytale's way of "wording" this, as it were, it does not seem that this use of his chamelon-powers are particularly out of order for a face dancer. He is not thinking about how he, as a master with face dancing abilities, is able to use these abilities in a particularly clever way - it is part of being a face dancer.

I'd say this suggests that the Tleilaxu is a society which breeds specialists who are, unless otherwise stated, more or less equal. Maybe not entirely, but no master/slave relationship (ie. more western society's male/female-divide a couple of hundred years back, then the white/black-divide).

Note also that the whistling language was a control mechanism which was not specific to facedancers - it is used on Hayt! Later on, it becomes specific to the face dancers. It does not seem to be so in GEoD, where Leto hears "Screams and shouts replaced the petitioners' chanting. Leto recognized Tleilaxu battle-commands" - the face dancers are not predisposed to obey any order yet, a special creation not fully human, but they are used as cannon fodder!

The change is begun is GEoD:
"That was Nunepi-a proud, flinty-faced man who had come up through the ranks of Tleilaxu management. Not a Face Dancer himself, he considered the Dancers his personal servants; they were the water through which he moved."
In HoD, Waff is thinking:
"They were constructs, tools, just as the ghola on Gammu was a tool, all designed with the language of God spoken only by Masheikhs."

I don't think this is the same thing at all - "considering them servants" does not even make much sense if they are only tools. And there is a huge difference between rising through the ranks, and being a "Masheik", which is a specific, nearly religious, class of citizen.


Didn't Frank write something about how various forms of government would become aristocracies and/or feudal in nature, over time...?


I short, I think the Tleilaxu changed. After Hayt, some of them began being resurrected and this led to lifetimes of accumulated power within their society - and hence to "the ultimate hereditary system". At some point, those not serially resurrected would become mere slaves, and the masters begin to be a aristocratic/religious ruling class. (Maybe the whole religious language-of-god-thing came before this, but one could easily imagine it would be a consequence of having acheived immortality and ruling as gods).
Face Dancer become a sub-human class, but Scytale was ressurected as a master - presumably because of his memories of Muad'Dib. Maybe this was only after the Tleilaxu started venerating Leto II...? Or, as Redstar suggests, he was part of the change and arranged to be resurrected as non-face dancer early on - maybe as they began to lose status.

Re: Scytale - Face Dancer to Master

Posted: 15 Nov 2009 12:48
by chanilover
I like the idea of Scytale the Face Dancer being resurrected as a Master due to his knowledge of Muad'Dib, but if the Face Dancer had been reborn as a ghola, wouldn't it have still been a mule and have been able to shape-shift?

Speculation aside, I think this is just a case of Frank developing the Tleilaxu culture over the decades the books were written.

Re: Scytale - Face Dancer to Master

Posted: 15 Nov 2009 14:55
by Lundse
chanilover wrote:I like the idea of Scytale the Face Dancer being resurrected as a Master due to his knowledge of Muad'Dib, but if the Face Dancer had been reborn as a ghola, wouldn't it have still been a mule and have been able to shape-shift?
Duncan, in the last two books, is "upgraded", as I remember it. No reason Scytale could not have had a similar treatment.

I do find it odd that they would take away abilities, but there are suggestions that Face Dancing implies mule - don't know why Scytale would rather be able to have children than shapeshift, but there might be other drawbacks... Or maybe the stigmata of being a Face Dancer, as Tleilaxu society looked then, far overshadows what is won by being able to shapeshift (as he should have no need for it, in his new position).

Re: Scytale - Face Dancer to Master

Posted: 16 Nov 2009 13:09
by Idahopotato
If the Scytale in DM was a Ghola of a different Scytale, that would answer a question I have always had. How did they get Scytale's body after DM? I imagine the Fremen would have taken his water after Paul killed him.

Re: Scytale - Face Dancer to Master

Posted: 16 Nov 2009 13:12
by inhuien
Lundse wrote:
chanilover wrote:I like the idea of Scytale the Face Dancer being resurrected as a Master due to his knowledge of Muad'Dib, but if the Face Dancer had been reborn as a ghola, wouldn't it have still been a mule and have been able to shape-shift?
Duncan, in the last two books, is "upgraded", as I remember it. No reason Scytale could not have had a similar treatment.

I do find it odd that they would take away abilities, but there are suggestions that Face Dancing implies mule - don't know why Scytale would rather be able to have children than shapeshift, but there might be other drawbacks... Or maybe the stigmata of being a Face Dancer, as Tleilaxu society looked then, far overshadows what is won by being able to shapeshift (as he should have no need for it, in his new position).
The drawbacks are total, he would have no place in Bene Tleilax society as anything other than a slave. Why was he permitted to advance to the high echelons of the Bene Tleilax, I just don't know. Perhaps Scytale was always a Master a then a clone was made into a face dancer and then later on the face dancers memories were reincorporated in to a pure Ghola of the original, ala a process similar to what happened to Duncan the Last.

Re: Scytale - Face Dancer to Master

Posted: 16 Nov 2009 13:27
by Freakzilla
That makes more sense. He was regrown as a FD becasue the mission was to important for the average FD, then regrown as a master again.

Re: Scytale - Face Dancer to Master

Posted: 16 Nov 2009 14:11
by Lundse
Freakzilla wrote:That makes more sense. He was regrown as a FD becasue the mission was to important for the average FD, then regrown as a master again.
Hu? They didn't have the ability to reawaken memories.

The way I see it, cloning masters came after they could awaken memories (I am not saying they never made a clone before this, just that we have no reason to assume that masters were 'serialized').

Tleilaxy society changed - we know this from the way Face Dancers are handled and think. We have every reason to assume this coincides with the ability to 'live again' - creating a master race.

Scytale's change is not from 'slave Face Dancer' to 'master', but from an old style of Face Dancer whom they only grudging accept as citizens but which they are beginning to frown upon as less-than-human - to the beginning master race which was, in all probability, initially defined by being 'serialized'. Scytale would be among the first to be serialized, as he had important knowledge of Paul, the Guild and the BG. As Face Dancers became non-humans, serialized masters would either be purged from that caste, or cleverly choose to be reborn as non-Face Dancers.

Re: Scytale - Face Dancer to Master

Posted: 16 Nov 2009 14:56
by inhuien
Lundse wrote:
Freakzilla wrote:That makes more sense. He was regrown as a FD becasue the mission was to important for the average FD, then regrown as a master again.
Hu? They didn't have the ability to reawaken memories.

The way I see it, cloning masters came after they could awaken memories (I am not saying they never made a clone before this, just that we have no reason to assume that masters were 'serialized').
Of course they couldn't reawaken past memories prior to the events at the end of Messiah but after it they could and would have with avengeance. I don't accept your proposal that they weren't serializing Masters, Bijaz states as much, or at least alludes to it.

Re: Scytale - Face Dancer to Master

Posted: 16 Nov 2009 15:38
by SandChigger
Serializing them in preparation for (in hopes of?) the day when they finally learned how to reactivate the memories?

Re: Scytale - Face Dancer to Master

Posted: 16 Nov 2009 16:23
by Freakzilla
I never said anyone was being sterilized. The way I read it, sterility was a side-effect of the shape-shifting ability. :?

Re: Scytale - Face Dancer to Master

Posted: 16 Nov 2009 17:04
by SandChigger
Freakzilla wrote:I never said anyone was being sterilized. The way I read it, sterility was a side-effect of the shape-shifting ability. :?
:shock:

Dude, it's going to be a REALLY BIG pinch. :lol:

Re: Scytale - Face Dancer to Master

Posted: 16 Nov 2009 19:01
by Freakzilla
I must have missed something... :?

OFF TO CUB SCOUTS!

Re: Scytale - Face Dancer to Master

Posted: 17 Nov 2009 03:57
by Lundse
inhuien wrote:I don't accept your proposal that they weren't serializing Masters, Bijaz states as much, or at least alludes to it.
Hmm... I didn't catch that from reading Messiah, nor from searching for the term "master". Do you remember where?

Re: Scytale - Face Dancer to Master

Posted: 17 Nov 2009 05:18
by SandChigger
I think this ties in with the suggestion that Bijaz is actually a Master? At the very least, he is a serial ghola: if he weren't, he would not refer to having multiple "pasts":
"Duncan is it?" Bijaz asked. "Is it truly Duncan Idaho?"

"It is," Idaho said. "I remember."

"Then Scytale's plan succeeded!"

"Scytale is dead," Paul said.

"But I am not and the plan is not," Bijaz said. "By the tank in which I grew! It can be done! I shall have my pasts—all of them. It needs only the right trigger."
I'm assuming this is what inhuien is referring to...?

Re: Scytale - Face Dancer to Master

Posted: 17 Nov 2009 05:43
by Lundse
SandChigger wrote:I think this ties in with the suggestion that Bijaz is actually a Master? At the very least, he is a serial ghola: if he weren't, he would not refer to having multiple "pasts":
"But I am not and the plan is not," Bijaz said. "By the tank in which I grew! It can be done! I shall have my pasts—all of them. It needs only the right trigger."
I'm assuming this is what inhuien is referring to...?
Presumably. I guess this means certain models, at least, were in 'serialized' production. Probably the better ones, which might very well have included great leaders.

I still think the ability to reawaken memories is what changed Tleilaxu society, though. Scytale, in DM, does not think of his status as Face Dancer as something to be embarrased about, and there is no mention of the master caste. Even if most or all leaders of the Tleilaxu were clones, I think the change to immortal leaders is what created this master caste - I am reminded of Frank's The Eyes of Heisenberg here... The immortals consolidate power, and begin to see all others as tools - as Face Dancers lose status, the (one?) Face Dancer(s) leader choses to be resurrected as something else, for obvious reasons...

Re: Scytale - Face Dancer to Master

Posted: 17 Nov 2009 07:28
by Freakzilla
chanilover wrote:I like the idea of Scytale the Face Dancer being resurrected as a Master due to his knowledge of Muad'Dib, but if the Face Dancer had been reborn as a ghola, wouldn't it have still been a mule and have been able to shape-shift?

Speculation aside, I think this is just a case of Frank developing the Tleilaxu culture over the decades the books were written.
I think the BT could have altered the ghola, taken (turned off?) away the shape-shifting gene and restoring verility.

Re: Scytale - Face Dancer to Master

Posted: 17 Nov 2009 09:21
by Lundse
Freakzilla wrote:I think the BT could have altered the ghola, taken (turned off?) away the shape-shifting gene and restoring verility.
Exactly, like they could make Duncan faster in HoD, even though he was "an old model".