The Nerd Next Door

Nerd, Loving Uncle, Dork, Wannabe Writer.

[goth-queen]

[smellbringer]

One message I think a lot of people miss in both the Dune book and Dune movies is how truly insidious death by fanaticism is. Not physical death mind you, though there is plenty of that. I mean personality death, the death of who you were and could have been. Because fanaticism doesn't just kill on a physical level, but on an emotional and psychological level on top of it. Whatever that fanatic once was is well and truly dead, only mindless loyalty in their place.

You see it in Stilgar; at the start of Dune he's a compassionate and caring leader with a small sense of humor to him and a capacity for mercy. By the end Stilgar has lost all of that, he's just another rabid follower in a sea of millions. Paul even comments on it in the book, thinking to himself that Stilgar is lesser now because of his fanaticism. Not lesser compared to Paul mind you, Stilgar is lesser at the end of Dune than he was at the start. Stilgar may live and breathe, but the man he was is simply dead; smothered by a fanatical devotion to the Lisan Al-Gaib.

What makes it sadder is that this sort of thing happens all to often in our world. It's how cults work, hollowing you out and replacing you with a mindless fanatic. Like Stilgar you become lesser for it as you shun anything that can distract from your devotion. It's a harrowing and tragic transformation in the Dune book, the Dune movies, and in real life.

[smellbringer]

It’s funny how, in a story like Star Wars, it’s love that saves the heroes. But in Dune love dooms the heroes.

The original Bene Gesserit plan was for Jessica to bear an Atreides daughter. Who would in turn be crossbred with a Harkonnen to sire a son with Atreides values and Harkonnen strength. Which one would think requires House Atreides to be standing.

By giving into her passion for Leto and bearing a son, Jessica causes the Bene Gesserit to write off House Atreidies and leave them to their death. If it hadn’t been for that then House Atreides would likely have been allowed to stand for at least another generation and Leto allowed to live.

So Jessica’s love for Leto is what ironically gets him killed.

[drunk-on-starlight]

Battleborn is also an alright novel, though I admit to finding the concept of a ya Halo novel to be extremely funny. All the teenage drama, and also the covenant trying to kill them all.

I'd say a group of teenagers managing to outmanuever and even win limited victories against them is implausible, but that was basically the spartan iii program so I can't criticize it too much.

It is both funny, accurate and mildly terrifying that the kids get recruited by ONI after escaping Meridian; that is the sort of thing they do, and at this point in the human/covenant I don't see why not, but it does hover ominously over the ending.

Dorian was more accurate than he might have known when asking ONI if it was easier to send kids to die, and the way it's described from Saskia's point of view, how the idea of being immensely beneficial thrills her, sounds like how ONI recruits a lot of people, by playing to them like that. Like I said, ominous.

[bloodgulchblog]

I looooved the incomplete YA Halo trilogy. I genuinely think that Halo in its earliest lore, given the child soldier natures of the Spartan-IIs and IIIs, has always had huge appeal to kids without having to be "kid books." YA Halo is different because it actually is in there claiming that audience with its whole chest, but it doesn't talk down to them and doesn't break tone. I really respected what they did there and I'm still sad we don't know what happened to those kids.

[ur-haruspis]

I love those books as well, Battle Born especially I thought was absolutely fantastic. We so often lament "lost childhood" in Halo and it was nice for a book to really delve into what the "childhood" part of that actually looks like.

I think as well that YA is mostly a marketing term. It was applied to these books because of a specific publishing deal with Scholastic, and if that label wasn't highlighted the way it was then I don't think people would really make much of a fuss because it really is more of a bildungsroman, and Halo is full of bildungsroman stories—The Fall of Reach, Forward Unto Dawn, even Cryptum comes to mind as a book that you could well argue hits a lot of the tropes that have come to be subsumed by what is broadly considered YA.

[bloodgulchblog]

This is my irregularly unscheduled reminder to anyone who follows me that Cryptum is a beautiful tragedy of a young man deciding he's going to grow up to be, through the power of science fiction, a copy of a different person he believes is more useful/necessary than himself.

You have nothing to lose but [however long it takes you to read a relatively short book.]

[smellbringer]

Bornstellar in Cryptum gives me the same vibe as Paul Atreides in Dune. In that they're both young men who discover that they are the Chosen One. But also discover that being the Chosen One fucking sucks and only brings them pain and hardship.

[ruinedchildhood]

[helloitsbees]

[fuckthisbloganditscurses]

Happiness Will Come To You.

[12goblins]

when tho

[fuckthisbloganditscurses]

When You Least Expect It. Probably Late March

[wizardshark]

reblog for happiness to come for you in late march!

[zigxortega]

[zac--efren]

I reblogged this last year and I hung out with blink-182 backstage on March 30. Reblogging again because it worked the first time.

[scientiablr]

honestly, last year one of the best days of my life happened in late March

[quadradaz]

I found out my VA disability claim was finally approved in late March of last year.

[acidbathbunnies-moved]

this could be big

[smellbringer]

Call of Duty Zombies in a nutshell.

[depsidase]

[smellbringer]

Has anyone done crossover yuri ship art/writing of Samus Aran and Scarlet El Vandimion? Because they totally should; I'd be down as fuck for that crossover.

A hardened intergalactic bounty hunter and a prim and proper noblewoman falling for one another over their mutual love of dispensing swift and just violence upon their foes? Sign me the fuck up.

[virgoasf]

[curlsandstems]

I need this.

[poni1kenobi-deactivated20250915]

Reblogged last year, hoping it comes this year

[dat2ndaccount97]

Fingers crossed!

[thyfleshc0nsumed]

I saw a dude with an American flag tattoo on his arm (there were a LOT of boyfriends of bisexual women at this event) and I said "is that an American flag tattoo?" and he was like "yeah" and I was like "...why?" and he was like "I had 16 cousins die serving this country" lollll

[foolstooth]

[smellbringer]

^ Sailor Moon dub writers in the 90's trying to cover up lesbians.

[anxeious]

[scramratz]

So many older movies couldn’t be made nowadays not because of “woke” or whatever but the fact that Hollywood is allergic to casting anybody who could even remotely be considered ugly. Can you imagine Little Shop of Horrors being made today? Timothée Chalamet as Seymour???

[thenotoriousscuttlecliff]

Think when a lot of people say they want low budget Doctor Who what they really mean is low stakes. Midnight is seen as low budget, but it really wasn't, yet it is low stakes compared to what came before and after it. Wild Blue Yonder is another example of this. It wasn't a cheap episode to make, but the stakes are quite low, just the Doctor and Donna against two aliens on an empty ship, and it was considered the best of the 60th specials.

[feefal]

My body is already an inhospitable environment, there’s no way a friggin baby would be able to survive in it

[feefal]

Also babies can’t even fight, how would they fare in battle against my inner demons?

[rokarambles]

[charl0ttan]

yonkers is such a deeply unserious name for a place. i bet nobody even dies there

[smellbringer]

Well, unless you're reading World War Z that is. In which case basically fuckin' everyone dies.

[thepromiscuousfinger]

[chaifootsteps]

#Please little bird

[meriwetherwrites]

I love that the modern-day tumblr post equivalent of chain emails only requires me to reblog a relatively pleasant image instead of forward an email to a bunch of my friends and family members to quell my raging anxiety.