io9 
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San Francisco, 1:26 PM
Sat Dec 19
24 posts in the last 24 hours
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01:24 PM
Namely, write it like someone else has to pick up where you left off.
Unless of course the series is definitively without question ending.
This way things like the Last Stand killing chunks of the cast and making a mess of a job for any future sequels would likely not happen.
01:00 PM
12:47 PM
I don't know why but that phrase makes me snicker.
12:41 PM
X-Men
X2
Superman Returns
12:39 PM
This just isn't saying much.
12:23 PM
1) That the Nigerians represent all black people. They definitely don't. Admittedly, there could be more sympathetic Africans, and the few there are could be arguably tokens, but the Nigerians represent the Nigerians.
2) That oppressed people are unified in their oppression. This has never been the case, and all oppressors have used the strategy of "divide and conquer." White indentured servants in the colonies were told that they should be fortunate that they weren't African slaves. Clearly, the Africans in D9 were capitalizing on the fact that there was a new group of "minorities" to push around.
3) That Wikus, though the protagonist, is supposed to be completely sympathetic. He is a very complicated character. I read somewhere that Wikus' last name is supposed to be a kind of joke name in South Africa, kind of the "dumb redneck"stereotype. Wikus is basically a Michael Scott character. He's supposed to be awkward, clumsy, and not very bright.
12:08 PM
12:25 PM
10:40 AM
Frank Herbert subverts this basic story by making the Fremen prophecy about an outsider becoming the Mahdi a partial fabrication built around ideas and patterns planted by the Bene Gesserit in order to protect their members should they be trapped on Arrakis. Paul and Lady Jessica knowingly take advantage of the prophecy for their own survival and later Paul uses it for his revenge. Herbert has said of heroes, ""The bottom line of the Dune trilogy is: beware of heroes. Much better [to]rely on your own judgment, and your own mistakes." In the second book, "heroic" Paul has become an ineffectual leader whose followers have gone out of control launching a jihad in his name that kills billions. Instead of dealing with the consequences of his actions, he ends by wandering into the desert to die like a Fremen -- only to return years later as a crazy prophet mocking his own empire.
The Fremen aren't truly native to Arrakis, they are descendants of colonists, the Zensunni wanderers who were exiled from the more civilized parts of the universe. Unlike the later colonists they adapted to the desert environment rather than wanting force to the environment to adapt to humans.
10:34 AM
10:34 AM
The fact is, I think you got it wrong. This story is really about the outsider becoming the insider -- that's the archetype at play, it just works really well in colonization stories because the sides are so well defined and it's easy to make the colonizers the bad guys. However, it works in crime stories (undercover agent/criminals), political stories (undercover agent/radicals), sci-fi (undercover agent/aliens), and so on.
The reason these stories are told is because the archetype is powerful ... it's just this particular flavor is so easy to do.
07:52 AM
When people realize the concept of race is a load of BS.
Alternately, when people start hiring better writers.
-Kle.
09:30 AM
The downside of the human mind's tendency to classify everything into compartments, it seems.
07:45 AM
It isn't colonization until people are born and grow up there.
-Kle.
12:06 AM
03:39 AM
08:15 AM
09:33 AM
Natives are mostly invisible in modern American movies, unless they conform to the noble savage archetype/stereotype.
10:55 AM
12:04 AM
12:03 AM
Hardware Wars! The gripping space saga of everyday appliances. You'll laugh! You'll cry! You'll kiss five bucks goodbye! May the farce be with you.