Until the end of time, I will still wonder why the Fremen went to war and just happened to bring along a few sets of tritons, conveniently lined up against the wall and ready for use during the Paul/Feyd (oh, if only the fic existed for that) knifefight. You're saying to yourself, "THAT IS WHAT YOU NOTICED?" in between the, er, floating baron spinning mid air before, um, being blown out a convenient hole in the wall and kind of--spinning through the air until he's eaten by a worm while Paul and the Fremen look on in approval and Alia encompassing the stereotype of every evil child ever right up to evil creepy child voice, but yes, I want to know who thought, going to war, let me grab five sets of these terribly conspicuous, heavy, unwieldy drums, just in case of melodramatic emergency.

I just--there's something really weird about riding giant worms carrying drums. Like, it feels beneath shai-halud dignity, okay? Think about it; you're a giant worm, you got stuck with a fancy Fremen crowbar and OUCH OUCH OUCH so you roll over and then TRICKERY the humans are riding you! But fine, fuckers, it's for going to war which you're a giant worm, you are always killing humans and now you're driving humans to kill other humans, so that's consistent. Until you realize, no, you're not carrying tiny humans to kill other humans; you're carrying tritons that the tiny humans will play for dramatic emphasis and all you can think is, the other makers are never going to stop laughing. And they won't.

( other things )

I finished re-reading Dune, Heretics of Dune, and Chapterhouse: Dune; yeah, skipped three to leap ahead.

For the record; Heretics and Chapterhouse are surprisingly good and are better written and better paced than Dune itself, and they're also massively female pov and dominated by powerful female-only organizations; the Bene Gesserit, the Fish Speakers (Leto II's private fanatic army and their descendants) and the Honored Matres. It's not necessarily inconsistent with the earlier books in philosophy, but--still.

But going back to Dune:

This bothers me: in however many years people have been using melange, which is a fucking lot, in all that time, no one--and I mean no one--worked out where it came from? Like, even by accident? The entire basis of a lot of Dune is that no one knows where the mysterious Spice comes from. They can clone people, travel in space, see the future, control people's minds with special voice training, but spice is this eternal mystery of mysteriousness. They know:

1.) Spice can only be found on Dune.
2.) Dune has giant sandworms that don't exist anywhere else.
3.) Sandworms are really attracted to spice.
4.) No matter how much they take, the spice does not run out.
5.) These facts are in no way connected whatsoever.

The worst part--and I mean, really--is when people do find out, there is not chagrined shock--we have missed something really simple!--but instead this strange, "Wow, this is proof Muad'dib is superawesome and inscrutable; he worked out the worms and the spice are connected! How is this possible? It is so obscure and strange!" and everyone draws in a breath in awe and amazement at the fact it took having to achieve COSMIC POWERS to do cause and effect that the average five year old could work out within twenty minutes of the movie starting. If you read the book, the first time they tell you about Arrakis.

And now I go back to ignoring that again. Very thoroughly.