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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   2837 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 31, 2023

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I've read some non-Dune Herbert (like the human ants book and the evil Indian guy on a water planet trilogy), and they were even worse. Herbert was just not a very good writer that had a momentary stroke of worldbuilding genius.

I really don't understand the praise for Dune's worldbuilding. The Fremen are ridiculous/retarded:

https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-part-i-war-at-the-dawn-of-civilization/

And as for the rest of it, Warhammer 40k rips it off and does it all better. I will not apologize for the sheer spice in that take.

Nobody cares (well, apparently except you) if the Fremen are realistic. They're cool. And for the rest, even if 40k does it more to your liking, the fact remains that Dune did it first and deserves credit for that.

Nobody cares (well, apparently except you) if the Fremen are realistic

Sorry dawg, Brett Devereaux apparently does, and I've seen this particular piece of work crop up both on the Motte, as a definitive rebuttal to the "Weak times, weak men" hypothesis that so many are fond of, and in the wild elsewhere, that I can be confident there's a significant number of people who find the Fremen-wank grating.

And they're far from the worst elements in the novel, credit for being first only goes so far. So sure, I "give credit" to Dune, if you so desire, which doesn't negate my stance that I think it's a mediocre book with questionable worldbuilding, queer plotting, 1D characters, and enough fetish material to make an accurate adaptation to the big screen something you should book your popcorn for well in advance.

Hey, we did have a "Good times, weak men" moment just recently in Afghanistan. It turns out that wealth and industry (at least in our hands) can't beat small arms and religious fervor so intense they were prepared to blow themselves up just to defeat us. Perhaps things would've been different if the PLA had gone in and shown the world what real human rights abuses look like, who knows.

There's some truth in "Good times, weak men". Take Rome. Their tenacity was absolutely legendary until it wasn't. They lost to Hannibal at Trebia, Lake Trasimene and then Cannae - 20% of male citizens dead in under two years. Rome totally rejected the possibility of defeat and fought on to ultimate victory! Later on they're surrendering and paying tribute to the Goths, the Huns, everyone and their dog. There's no Cannae spirit of victory at any costs, a single defeat is enough for them to make concessions.

That's not a particularly convincing statement, one of the benefits of "good times, hard men" is how vaguely it can be interpreted. The Japanese and Germans during WW2 suffered far harder times than the US did, what with their soldiers getting ships full of ice cream while the former were eating their shoes. The Soviets suffered plenty of "hard times", and even they gave up on fighting a mountain insurgency. The Chechens prided themselves on being "hard men" and even they got their cheeks clapped later when the Russians swallowed losses.

It is a largely useless and outright misleading frame to view the world in, even if there are examples of moral "weakness" (or at least a lack of appetite for brutality) causing defeat. And that's not even the definition of weak being used in every context, another benefit of how vague the term is in the English language is that it lets people accidentally or intentionally conflate two very separate things, cowardice and military weakness. The US managed to clap ISIS despite the latter being even more rabid than the Taliban.

The Romans famously gave up on Germania after disastrous losses at Teutoburg and well before anyone could plausibly call them weak/decadent.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the US carried out air strikes against IS but otherwise used local proxies for the actual fighting, yes? Not a great example.

What does it matter? Fighter pilots, if not drone operators, are stereotypical "hard men", and it certainly seems that the countries experiencing "good times" have an abundance of them.

Besides, there were SF sent into the region, who are undeniably so.

The fact that technology and state capacity matters more than how fierce and militaristic your average goon is, should count as another knock against Good Times, Weak Men.

Besides, there were SF sent into the region, who are undeniably so.

As the saying goes, "You can't thicken up a bucket of spit with a handful of buckshot."

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