correct me if i’m wrong cos i don’t watch dune.. but i’ve seen people call paul a tragic character. except isn’t he a whole white coloniser tricking indigenous poc into believing he’s a prophet to serve his own interests? that’s inherently evil that cannot be a tragic character imo
so yes that is correct that is what happens. the tragedy is that he is a sixteen year old boy who gets a vision of this happening and he is TERRIFIED and absolutely does not want this to happen at all. He does not want the holy war he does not want to be the chosen one he initially very much wants to fight alongside the fremen as equals trying to liberate themselves from their current colonizer without becoming the messiah because they have common political cause.
And then the entire second half of the first book (and the second movie) are about the concessions he makes to himself bit by bit by bit (well it’s the only way to save his mom and sister. well it’s the only way to prevent nuclear war. well he does want his revenge. well maybe he IS special.) Until by the end he has lost 100% of his humanity, fully wants to be the messiah and is willing to manipulate people into thinking so, and has declared himself duke of arrakis in his father’s name and made a play for the imperial throne.
you’re right that it’s evil. the book and these movies agree with you. the tragedy is watching a child who desperately wanted to avoid this slowly completely lose himself to it anyways. i don’t think “tragic” and “evil” are inherently mutually exclusive.
As the Ides of March approaches, let us all remember it not as the day Caesar was stabbed a whole bunch, but for what it truly was: the day a group of organized elected representatives killed a sitting unelected dictator.
sorry if i’m being a party pooper but because rabies is apparently the new joke on here ??? please remember that rabies has an almost 100% fatality rate after symptoms develop so if you’re bitten or scratched by an animal that you aren’t 100% sure is vaccinated then GO TO A DOCTOR. it’s not a joke. really.
The cruelty of racist white men.
mantis mouthparts source
“This is one more reminder that our experience of the external world (i.e. the sum of its qualia), and the actual external world, are two very different things. In fact they are entirely different orders of being — right down to the bottom. Your experience of things exists only inside the few dark cubic inches of your skull, in a neural model of the outer world that your brain creates from the inputs of your senses. This is the only way that your self-awareness, your personhood, can understand and interact with the external physical world, because your sense of being a self is also a neural phenomenon. The outer world, which exists independently of human awareness, is vastly richer and more variegated than our limited senses perceive or than a brain-sized neural model could ever fully mimic. And internal world-models only evolved in ways that helped creatures survive, thrive, and reproduce. Anything else would be selected out as a distraction and a biologically expensive waste of neural processing power.”
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This Week’s Sky at a Glance, January 10 – 19 - Sky & Telescope - Sky & Telescope
Damn, Sky & Telescope, I just wanted to know what was up this week; I wasn’t looking for an existential examination of the subjective nature of reality, and I *really* didn’t need it while I was a little stoned.
underground parking garages are criminally underutilized as a horror setting. windowless curving concrete labyrinths stretching up and down and all around you, that's some Backrooms shit