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.
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.
) 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.
You aren't thinking or really existing unless you're willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgment of your existence.