Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

I know that now, thanks for clarifying.

I still want to see a review of someone reading straight out of Chapterhouse into Hunters and Sandworms and read all about how their brains just exploded trying to make sense of it all, because it really makes absofuckinglutely no sense if you haven't read the Legends series!

A Thing of Eternity wrote:SPOILER ALERT TO ANYONE WHO GIVES A SHIT ABOUT ME SPOILING A MASSIVE PLOTLINE FROM HUNTERS AND SANDWORMS, DO NOT READ THIS POST!

SandChigger wrote:

A Thing of Eternity wrote:One of those weaker arguments is saying that them admitting to creating Omnius and Erasmus proves they're making up the notes. It really doesn't at all, FH could in theory have had 2 very roughed in characters like them and when KJABH said they were brainstorming how the characters should be they could easily have just been referring to fleshing them out. All it proves is that those specific personalities didn't come out of FH's notes.

Obviously this is NOT what truely happened, I'm just saying that using the fact that they came up with the actual characters personalities themselves as evidence of this is a really weak argument and it's one we've been using for years.

I think we should drop it, it make our logic look flawed.

Um... I don't recall anyone ever making that argument. The point is that Erasmus and Omnius prove, and by their own admission, that they have added things not originally in Frank Herbert's outline or notes for "Dune 7". (And note that even with Erasmus, they claimed that he is a combination of elements they found in the outline and notes.)

What calls into question their use—or even the existence—of the notes is how wildly different some of the stuff in McDune is from Frank Herbert's Dune.

They never claimed that they didn't add things of their own to Dune 7 though - we don't need any evidence to prove that at all, it's just common sense that they would have added some of their own ideas, if all they found was an outline (which of course they didn't) then of course they would have. This is something that has come up many many times over the past few years, and I remember because it's been bugging me for years, people have directly used KJABH admitting they wrote those characters as evidence for the fact that the whole D&M were robots thing was KJABH's invention, which it isn't evidence for at all (again, FH could have written "Daniel and Marty were robots all along" - that wouldn't conflict at all with their original story or their story of having written those 2 characters). Though obviously yes they did make that up themselves.

In the post I was responding to Freak said what's quoted below (I missed part of the quote, this paragraph is directly following one talking about their claim that they found the notes for Dune 7, and whether intentionally or not it seems to be referencing the previous paragraph when talking about their admissals showing they had lied). Now, they way Freak says it is a lot more ambiguous than what's been said in the past, but it still comes across very strongly as: They made up Erasmus and Omnius, therefore they made up E&O being D&M as well.

Freakzilla wrote: Not only that, they said we'd have to write the prequels first for the sequels to make sense, and the only characters from the prequels that were in the sequels were admittedly their own creations. So basically they lied ot us to sell books with Dune on the cover.

I'm not trying to start an argument, if that's not what Freak was saying here that's cool, just pointing out that that's how it comes across, both in it's own context and in the context of the past years of people using it much more clearly and directly as evidence that the robots thing was all made up.

Anyways, carry on, as long as we all agree it doesn't prove anything about the notes existing or not existing, and what was or was not in them (other than specifics of character development which they admitted to doing themselves) then we're all cool.

I'm not quite sure I follow. Wouldn't this argument also prevent us from using anything to argue the existence of the notes? Since for every detail we point out in McDune one can always argue that this is simply KJABH either adding their own detail (on its own this is fine - they are working from an outline) or that FH wrote some basic structure to that particular detail's effect and they extrapolated.

We are left with only with the arguments that the McDune themes do not mesh with what FH had already written and that certain details are contradictory to published Dune. If we allow the argument that Frank could conceivably have written anything in his notes (such as "Marty & Daniel are robots") then this argument will always demolish anything one says against the notes, since it is always possible Frank wrote it and made a mistake himself or was planning to go in a radically unexpected direction.

In other words, the existence of the notes becomes a moot point, and we cannot criticise on the basis of inconsistancy with FH, only on the stupidity of the new authors for not realising that FH's notes (which they claim exist and we cannot dispute) are incompatible with what is already written, and their stupidity in adding details that are incompatible with what is written.

Alternatively, I've completely and utterly miscontrued your argument, in which case I apologise profusely.

(In the above, one ignores the parallel arguments that the writing itself is bad on its own merits of course. That is for a different argument).

right, and I could almost buy into the idea of Marty & Daniel actually being Sentient Machines
from the Butlerian Jihad period, who escaped to "deep space", and were later met by renegade
Face Dancers from the Scattering, &etc. (there is the line at the end of Chapterhouse, something
like "the masters have a hard time accepting we can be independent from them", which we have
always taken as evidence that M&D were Independent FaceDancers, but the same notion could
apply to Sentient Machines ...)

so I'd give them that, I could almost see this as one of Frank's twists ... but they did
such a piss-poor job in the execution of the idea, as well as producing some less than Junior
High Reading Level "products", I still say fuck'em in the neck ...

I might be getting a little cryptomnesia here, but it occurred [the spelling of this word never fails to destroy me!] to me earlier today that if there is a link between Marty & Daniel and the Butlerian Jihad, it could be that at a molecular level the distinction between life and a machine can get blurry, such that the proscription, "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind" could apply to making sentient biological machines/life, as opposed to 'docile' life such as Face Dancers who cannot act on their own.

This would be a Tleilaxu answer to the Ixian breaking of the above proscription with their Navigation Machines.

No, I can see how my post could be taken that way, but how it was intended to be it doesn't prevent us from using anything else at all as evidence of them having made up the D&M = machines thing. Certain things are strong evidence, such as the passages from Chappterhouse where D&M are clearly shown to be advanced Face Dancers - this goes beyond the ruining of themes and such that KJABH did, it is a clear contradiction.

Though yes, the counterargument could always be made that FH had intended that as a red herring and did indeed plan for them to be machines, but that's a much weaker counter argument.

For most of our arguments we have fairly strong evidence and logic, and they have only very weak rebuttals. This particular argument (which for clarity is not the argument Freak was making he pointed out, but it is one that's come up before) is the opposite, if we said this proved, or was strong evidence for them having made up the machine thing, we would be wrong, it doesn't do anything of the sort. (The issue here isn't just that we'd be wrong saying it was proof, we'd also be very wrong saying it was even good evidence, that's the problem here) All it proves is that they had to make up personalities for those two characters themselves. So in this case, if we made this argument, we would be the ones with the extremely weak argument, and they would have a very strong rebuttal.

It's not about absolutes, little ever is. If you were to take my earlier posts and extrapolate them as absolutes, then yes, we'd have no real arguments at all. But, it's not about whether our arguments or theirs are absolutely perfect, it's about which arguments are stronger vs weaker and to which degree.

I like us to always be on the strong side, and by a large margin. This is very easy to acheive, so it's not generally a problem. But every now and then someone on our side makes an argument that is very weak - is it possible those weak arguments can still be bricks in the wall of our overall stance? Yes, but I like to make a wall out of only good bricks, lets just throw away the questionable ones, especially as we have so many rock solid ones just lying around!

Maybe the notes said they were automatons, in the idea that the face dancers were nothing more than chemical-biological machines created and directed by an outside controlling force. D&M and the face Dancers from the scattering had broken through all that, and were now a direct threat to the HM.

Of course, someone with less imagination reads 'automatons' and thinks robots.

Who knows, if there was any notes at all about Dune 7 they could have contained any number of things that lead KJABH to the robots plotline, or nothing at all and that was just something they completely made up themselves. They claimed the notes contained (or I remember them claiming this) something about an arc going right back to the Butlerian Jihad, but that could have been anything (SadisticCynic's earlier post seems a perfectly viable option for something KJABH could have screwed up), or flat out something they lied about.

The fact that they refuse to release the notes is the strongest evidence that if they exist (and I do believe they exist, in what form is anyone's guess) that KJABH did not follow them. If they'd followed the notes, they could have released them years ago to shut us all up.

That's the strongest evidence so far I think. If they'd followed the notes they would have had the ability to shut us all up (at least on that topic) all along, plus releasing the notes is the academically/historically correct thing to do, Christopher Tolkien knew this and so do KJABH. The only conceivable reason for them to withhold the notes is if they contain information that would just infuriate us all further (highly likely) or at the very least justify our current complaints.

Heck the notes could say "evil robots from the past pretend to be face dancers then try to kill everyone and Duncan is the last Kwisatz Haderach." It doesn't justify the hack job that was written.

I disagree that KJA knows that releasing the notes would be the right thing to do. For him, the right thing to do with DUNE is write as much as he possibly can milking the universe for all it has. He won't stop writing in that universe until legally constrained from doing so. I wouldn't doubt if he's already started talking to the next generation of Herberts just in case Brian leaves us sooner than later.

Sadly that's probably true, he's such a self centered person that he probably has no concept of the worth of the notes to the fans, or to the academic community, the only value he can likely see in anything is the value that thing has in relation to himself.

I do think though that the reason the HLP hasn't released them is that they'd cause an even bigger shitstorm.

I liked when Byron claimed to not remember what was in the notes, having only read them, or glanced through them, a decade or so ago. What Dune fan could POSSIBLY not read those notes thoroughly, and then again later if they weren't remembered well? It's not possible frankly.

He's a Dune fan for sure, I call bullshit that he doesn't know what's in the notes. AND if they'd matched what was written then he would have just said so, not said "I don't remember". Even if he did just read them a decade ago, the ONLY realistic reason he wouldn't have read them again when the Hunters and Sandworms came out is if he KNEW the books contradicted the notes, and simply couldn't face it (he stikes me as someone who's not the happiest with what's happened, but is sticking by his family dispite their crimes).

A Thing of Eternity wrote:(he stikes me as someone who's not the happiest with what's happened, but is sticking by his family dispite their crimes).

Truth ... he is a coward and a pussy.

Serkanner wrote:

A Thing of Eternity wrote:(he stikes me as someone who's not the happiest with what's happened, but is sticking by his family dispite their crimes).

Truth ... he is a coward and a pussy.

Absolutely, though that's like saying someone's a homo sapien and a human. Even that terrible status still places him way higher than KJA and BH in my opinion though.

A Thing of Eternity wrote:

Serkanner wrote:

A Thing of Eternity wrote:(he stikes me as someone who's not the happiest with what's happened, but is sticking by his family dispite their crimes).

Truth ... he is a coward and a pussy.

Absolutely, though that's like saying someone's a homo sapien and a human. Even that terrible status still places him way higher than KJA and BH in my opinion though.

Even a Mosquito I consider having a higher status than those two ... I will not squash a mosquito if I can avoid it. Hackerson and Bobo I will not give a second thought squashing them ... with a meteor, bear-shaped.

A Thing of Eternity wrote:For most of our arguments we have fairly strong evidence and logic, and they have only very weak rebuttals. This particular argument (which for clarity is not the argument Freak was making he pointed out, but it is one that's come up before) is the opposite, if we said this proved, or was strong evidence for them having made up the machine thing, we would be wrong, it doesn't do anything of the sort.

Thing, I agree that this argument *alone* is not very strong, but I think that it strongly supports (or is, at the very least, consistent with) the argument that Frank did not intend D&M to be robots, when other evidence (such as the last passages in CH:D) is considered.

If FH implied that D&M were IFD in CH:D, and KJA and BH have admitted that E&O were their own invention, that makes the argument that FH intended D&M to be robots extremely weak. It doesn't prove the non-existence of the notes, and it doesn't prove FH's intentions, but I think it's pretty damning evidence nonetheless.

HBJ

Hunchback Jack wrote:

A Thing of Eternity wrote:For most of our arguments we have fairly strong evidence and logic, and they have only very weak rebuttals. This particular argument (which for clarity is not the argument Freak was making he pointed out, but it is one that's come up before) is the opposite, if we said this proved, or was strong evidence for them having made up the machine thing, we would be wrong, it doesn't do anything of the sort.

Thing, I agree that this argument *alone* is not very strong, but I think that it strongly supports (or is, at the very least, consistent with) the argument that Frank did not intend D&M to be robots, when other evidence (such as the last passages in CH:D) is considered.

If FH implied that D&M were IFD in CH:D, and KJA and BH have admitted that E&O were their own invention, that makes the argument that FH intended D&M to be robots extremely weak. It doesn't prove the non-existence of the notes, and it doesn't prove FH's intentions, but I think it's pretty damning evidence nonetheless.

HBJ

Even with all the other evidence, it maybe moves up from "not evidence" to "weak evidence" in my opinion, because KJABH's story is that the notes said they were robots, and that statement about them creating the characters in no way shape or form contradicts that story. It IS evidence/proof that FH did not create those particular terrible characters though.

EDIT: If we're viewing it as just one more brick in the wall then sure, because FH obviously wrote D&M to be facedancers. But if FH had intended D&M to be robots and wrote that in the notes, then the fact that KJABH did the character development means nothing.

one of the dogs was having a chase-dream last night, rolled over and started clawing my face;
after I got him awake and on the floor, I settled back down, and right before I drifted back to sleep,
I thought I really should read McDune007 all the way thru - on the heels of that, I thought I should
first re-read Heretics & Chapterhouse all the way thru, as novels; I don't think I've done that in a
long, long time ....

since I have not read the McDune007 in its' entirety, I've been out-of-the-loop on the thinking about
what elements of the story could've possibly been Frank's, if any part of the "outline" tale is true ...

I've become intrigued with the claim that Frank's primary idea for Dune7 somehow was "tied" to the
Butlerian Jihad ... and I've been on the hate-wagon about Keith turning Marty & Daniel into transvestite
robots, and the Duncan undoing the entire reason for Leto's Sacrifice .... and having been extremely
quick (too quick, possibly) to dismiss anything the Hacks Twain have stated, ever, about anything,
I've never given serious thought to the issue ...

also, as I've stated before, I did not read the prequels and had little interest in them, altho I was aware
of their existence from grocery store check-out lines and trolling for runaways at bus stations; I did not
get involved in any of the internet discussions until both parts of the McDune007 were in paperback, &
I purchased them together (at a grocery-store check-out), based solely on the "from Frank Herbert's
Outline" blurb on the back cover .... so I was late to the speculation, anyway, and have not devoted
any serious brain-energy to it ... mocking tehKJA and cyberbullying Innerwebz BlahgFiction Writers has
occupied most of my time ...

[reposting in OH Dune Conclusion, where it probably should've gone in the first place]

A Thing of Eternity wrote:If we're viewing it as just one more brick in the wall then sure, because FH obviously wrote D&M to be facedancers. But if FH had intended D&M to be robots and wrote that in the notes, then the fact that KJABH did the character development means nothing.

Yes, absolutely. I agree with you completely. FH could have stated that D&M were robots in the notes, and KJA&BH could have created those two characters to satisfy that plot point. Both things could (theoretically) be true.

One thing I wanted to clarify: How strong is KJA and BH's statement that "FH had intended D&M to be robots and wrote that in the notes"? My recollection is that they've been vague about that, simply saying that D&M "had origins from the Jihad" or some such. Is there an interview where either author is more specific?

HBJ

A Thing of Eternity wrote:because KJABH's story is that the notes said they were robots

NO, it wasn't.

KJA said only that there was something in the Notes connecting the old couple with the Butlerian Jihad. He didn't quote the Notes exactly (as usual) or give any more detail than that. (That I have ever seen in print anywhere, at any rate.)

Because KJA never quotes exactly, only gives us HIS interpretation (just like we don't get to see the "Dune 7" outline, or any of the "Spice Planet" notes, outlines or sketches, or etc etc etc), which is pretty much guaranteed to be favorable to his PoV, it's really pretty worthless as evidence.

Again, I'm not familiar with anyone having put forward this "weak argument" you mention here. (Sorry, I've just been skimming this thread, were there any links posted to specific examples where someone has?) I agree with you that it would be weak, but I'm not convinced that it's an argument we've been making.

Sorry Chig, people using it as a specific argument is something from longer ago, back in the earlier days of Jacurutu and when we were still at DN. It's entirely possible my memory is at fault, or I mis-interpreted what I'd read though.

And yes, you're right, KJABH have never specifically said the notes say D&M were robots, just that there was that arc back to the BJ - but it is implied at least in my opinion that they got that from the notes. They're full of shit of course though.

Nekhrun wrote:

nistle2 wrote:So should I read some of the Brian Herbert abominations? I know this is an orthodox site but you guys must've read some of the Berbert books just to know how terrible they are.

Please don't. It's too late for some of us, but you can at least remain unsullied.

Just remember, if you read something one of us writes about what's in McDune and it doesn't seem like it could possibly be true, not only is it true, it's very likely way worse than you can imagine.

I am happy to report that I have not eaten the rotten fruit from the forbidden Tree of Bad Writing and I never will. Dune died with Frank Herbert and everything that has been done since is a complete and utter travesty and a big, fat money-grab.

If I ever feel the need for "more Dune", I just re-read the originals (again!), as I'm doing now.

Cheers!