All I know is that they're calling you back for another book club.Is the book that confusing?You know, you sound exactly like our friends and family.So it is confusing.Damn them.Haven't you done enough for the patrons?
Apparently not.All right.Apparently not.
It's not really the patrons that is the source of our headaches.I will admit a little behind the scenes here It's the goddamn algorithms that run the internet, right?
You know dropped a spot like why why why did this episode do better than that episode who the fuck knows?
It's a black literally.Nobody knows fuck the algorithms It's a hungry beast that you can never take a day off because you always have to be feeding it.Oh
I'm starting to understand why they fucking rebelled against computers.That's right!Let's go. Welcome to Gamjabar, your guide to the iconic world of Dune.
We'll be exploring the themes, philosophies, and characters found in the sandy depths of this vast universe, from Frank Herbert's groundbreaking novels to the adaptations on film and TV.My name is Leo.And my name is Abu!
And today on the show, hey, it's still Heretics of Dune.That's right.It's our book club series of Heretics of Dune.And we are on the second episode, diving deep into the pages of Frank's fifth book.
Now, as usual, we got to take care of some housekeeping before we dive in to these incredible chapters.So let's begin with the spoiler warning, folks.No spoilers. beyond the pages and books we've covered thus far.
So if you are caught up with the book clubs, and you've done the chapter readings for today, my goodness, you're good to go.
As it was written, as it was planned. Now, of course, a huge shout out as well before we get started to our Kwisatz Haderach level patrons.Case, Aiken, Daniel Dion, Roman Caballo, Jonathan Lambert, and C.R.
Oh, we call you back for one last job every goddamn time you try to retire.That's right.Lampius, whatever that planet's called.We drag you back in.
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in like 45 years, and you're gonna go, okay, here we go.
Round and round we go, another book club.
Oh, gosh.Well, just wait for our 18 book club series on Brian Herbert books. Well, of course, our thank you to the Kwisatz Haderach level patrons extends to all of our patrons.Seriously, your support makes what we do possible.
Truly could not make this show the way we do without your support.So thank you so much.
Thank you so much. Okay, game plan for the show.Y'all know how these book clubs are run.We will begin with a summary of today's chapters.Then we'll dive into a couple of takeaways.
And finally, we will wrap up by chomping down on some yummy spice morsels.Indeed.But before we get into all of that, let's take a quick break.Let's gather ourselves.When we come back.We're jumping into the summaries.
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Welcome back, everybody.Oh, gosh.Hope you had a great break.Hope you're ready for the whole rest of the episode.Our first chapter today introduces us to Hottie McBottie, Miles Tagg.
miles miles we have been waiting four years to talk about miles stag you know we'll get to why he's great but this dude's great yeah trust us and he is at the moment we join him reflecting on the conversation he had with
Reverend Mother Superior Tarazza.And we're going to look at their conversation and kind of what it reveals about the Bene Gesserit Gola Plan and Teg's role in it in our takeaways today.So stay tuned for that.
Nevertheless, this is an interesting conversation.It happened back on planet Lernaeus where Teg has his like little country cabin.He's been retired for quite some time.It's a farm.He's just a farmer Teg. And Tarazza made a fucking unannounced visit.
What?Just the worst kind of guest.What?It is also crazy to note, like Reverend Mother Superior Tarazza is the head of all of the Bene Gesserit.
So the fact that she herself is like, yo, what's up?I'm here.Crazy.Like she could have sent an acolyte.That's brought up in this chapter.
It's a pretty wild honor that she would come herself to ask him. Now, throughout the conversation, Teg is behaving as the military mentat he is.He kind of allows this delightful discomfort for Terraza.
He's kind of just sitting, like, give me the information you have to give me, and making it really hard for her.So fun.So fun to read.
And in one of the most telling moments of the conversation, Terraza allows herself a little emotional outburst of frustration with Teg.
Teg, why are you making this so hard for me?
Yeah.And because of that, and as a reaction to that, we get this quote, quote, Tag smiled slowly.The fact that Tarazza allowed herself such an explosion in front of him said many things.She would not do that with people she felt were untrustworthy.
And she certainly would not permit herself such an emotional display with a person she considered merely an underling.End quote.
So the head of the Bene Gesserit, the literal head of the Bene Gesserit, is asking him as an equal, come help us.We need you.
Right.You can really sense the mutual respect between these two people as well.They have a shared past.They've clearly worked together for many years.They have a working relationship, and there is mutual trust and respect.
That really runs both ways, and we get a sense of that throughout this whole chapter.
Yeah, I also found myself very much endeared to both characters.Yeah, like I found their energy was very pleasant, both as like grizzled, used to having a mask up, but willing to be a little bit playful with one another.
Yeah, the moment to Raza grins up at him.And it's like, Okay, you've had your fucking fun.Let's talk.Yeah, is so cute.
him being like, you're not here to talk about interior design.So stop complimenting my, you know, curtains or whatever.
Yeah.And just at one point, she's like, you've always looked like a, whatever, Duke Leto Atreides.And he inclines his head like a millimeter.That's his response.I've tried that in conversations.It's called rude.That's so funny.
Anyway, ultimately Tagg agrees to come out of retirement.You know, he taps out his cigar and he goes, all right, chief. But he does have some demands.Now, he wants to make his own team of trusted comrades.He's gonna get the team back together.
He wants complete control of the planet's defense.Doesn't want anybody getting in his way.And his restored rank will be not Supreme Bashar, just Bashar.Now, Terraza had anticipated pretty much all of these, except for that last one.
And Teg's like, well, no, no, no, you've got Brizmali, who's going to be Supreme Bashar.And she's like, fucking excuse me?How do you, how do you know?Because we haven't announced that we haven't even given them the job offer yet.Right.
And Teg's like, oh, come on.I have people who tell me what's going on with the Bene Gesserit.And it makes the most sense.He's a great dude.He's the best.He's going to be great in that role.
And he points out bringing him back as Supreme Bashar would like cramp Brizmali's style.
You know, this is someone that he knows.They know each other.It would put a halt in the momentum of Brizmali's career in a way that Teg doesn't want to do to him.
And notably, knowing when to step aside.If you'll recall, we had this conversation back in God Emperor, where I believe it was Leta who criticizes administrators who never know when to step aside and allow the youth to take over.
And here is Teg literally embodying that idea, knowing when to step aside and let the new guard come in.Knowing when it's your time to step down.
Yeah, it shows a flexibility and an avoidance of stagnation and status quo.Like he is clearly still fine.He's experimenting.He's gardening.He's like, he's active.He's got hobbies, even though he's nearly 400 years old.He's doing great.
He could probably still be doing the job, but clearly he made the decision at some point to retire and live a more peaceful life.
Now with a final warning about Shuang Yu, Terraza basically hands him some blank checks, which is wild.She's like, anything you need, any amount of money, any amount of resources, just whatever you need.Here's the paperwork.
You can sign it, fill in the blanks, choose your own salary.
But again, shows their trust and shows that she knows he's the kind of person to give himself a fair deal.And she has to leave, you know, he kind of invites her for dinner and she goes, I've got to, I've got to head out.So classic.
Now the chapter wraps up as we see Teg prepare to leave his household. He mentions early that most of his family's moved on, but his grown daughter is helping him tend to the farm and his various, I don't know, research.
And she's not super pleased that he's being dragged off, you know, as our kind of joking intro sampled from their conversations a little like, oh, goddammit, dad, aren't you done with them?You're supposed to be retired.
But he had a Bene Gesserit mother.This is a Bene Gesserit household.So the idea it's sort of a superficial, oh, dad, really?Okay, whatever, you know?Yeah.
And as a final thought, Teg considers the shape of the conversation and everything that has happened with Terraza.And he kind of realizes the unusual thing about his upbringing was that his Bene Gesserit mother
was just chilling on this planet for decades, it seems like.
Her decorations, her interior design is still on the wall.
Yeah, it's still her household.Even though she's long past at this point, it is notable that she was allowed to just like hang out on this planet for such a long time.
And he realizes with sort of wry amusement that this is plans within plans for the sisterhood, right?
Mm-hmm quote They've done it again tag thought they've had me waiting in the wings all these years just for this moment and quote and of course the impression we get is tag is someone who besides being the supreme Bashar was someone that the Bene Gesserit had plans for and gave
this planet, this household and this upbringing so that he could retire here and be here when they need him.Right.Which is very typical of the Bene Gesserit.
Totally.A backup for the backup for the backup, just in case, you know.
They're always planning those damn Bene Gesserit.
Okay.Let's talk about chapter five, because I mean, chapter five.Here we are.Here we are.I don't even know how to begin, but I suppose the beginning is the appropriate place.
Chapter five truly, honestly, like grabs us by the collar and throws us into an ice cold bath of new terminology and confusion.Yeah.Because we are. in the capital city of Bandalong on the planet Tleilax for the first time in the Dune Saga.Ew, gross.
We are seeing the inner workings of Tleilaxu society from the Tleilax perspective.Mind-blowing stuff.Incredible. We've literally never even gotten a hint of this before.And here we are thrown fully into it.It's extremely disorienting.
And this chapter for probably the first time in a while, because at this point, this many books into Dune, you're kind of getting used to Frank's style.
This is one that feels utterly disorienting in a way that a new reader probably hasn't felt since the opening chapters of Dune one.
Yes, a hundred percent.Like, this is major flashbacks to the old woman saying, Kwisatz Haderach and Paul going, who the fuck is that?And us going, who the fuck are any of these people?What's happening?What is happening?It is so disorienting.
And this is the chapter we get asked the most about regarding this book.
Yeah.The Tleilaxu in general.I mean, it's very confusing stuff.We're going to try and work our way through it over the course of this book club, of course.So buckle up.It's going to be a ride. Let's try to make sense of this chapter.
I'm going to run through a quick summary, but hang tight because later in the takeaways, we will be revisiting some more details about Tleilaxu culture.
So, we meet Twyllwyth Thwaf, who is the Master of Masters of the Bene Tleilax, as he prepares himself for a meeting with the rest of his ruling council.He has just come back from an all-faction conference.
that was called regarding this mysterious new document titled the Atreides Manifesto, which seems to denounce many of the faiths out there in the galaxy that have cropped up since the death of Leto II.
We don't get a lot of what it is.Yeah, it does seem like the kind of thing that the preacher would have been espousing at the time of Children of Dune.
Totally.It's that sort of like, railing against the major institutions of the galaxy.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.And there are some quotes that Woff reads from the manifesto in this and I was like, man, this is so late to like, this is just how we talk in all of God Emperor. Yeah.
So at least my headcanon, my theory so far is that this is probably just a late to to piece of work that has finally found its way into the public consciousness.
And it's freaking everybody out because later to loves to shit on the very thing that he created.You know, he does that all throughout God Emperor.
What's interesting is that the Tleilaxu see this document a little bit differently than the rest of the factions in the galaxy.To them, this document affirms their own religious beliefs.
which are, as we learn over the course of this chapter, super secret.They have had a lockdown on what their core religious beliefs are, and they've never let that leak outside of their inner workings, their core planets.
No one else in the galaxy actually knows what the Tleilaxu believe in. Throughout this chapter, we get some really genuinely shocking bits of information about the Tleilaxu, information that we have never heard about before.
First up, we learn that the Tleilaxu have been cultivating for thousands of years their own shitty reputation. We've joked for years about how shitty and gross and disgusting and vile the Tleilaxu are, and they're over here being like, yeah.
Aren't we gross and disgusting?We're so gross and so disgusting.Look at us.Ew, look at us.Ew.This has been an intentional plan for thousands of years to get the rest of the galaxy to underestimate them.
Meanwhile, they've been quietly waiting in the wings for the moment that they will rise to dominance.It appears, I mean, Woff is stoked because it appears that moment may be coming soon.
Right.I do love this little aside, though, which is they had captured a fish speaker.And I guess they were, I don't know, interrogating her or whatever, getting information about the outside world.
And she said, quote, long pretense creates a reality.You are truly vile, end quote.
And she's got a point, which is a great point.
If you are doing shitty, gross things for thousands of years just to trick people into being shitty and gross, it's like, at a certain point, you're just shitty and gross.
If you're an asshole to people for thousands of years, you're just an asshole, even if you were doing it ironically or whatever.So I got also, this chapter seemed very rich with the narrator and the person presenting us with the Tleilaxu perspective.
could be an untrustworthy narrator, right?
Oh, yeah, the perspective is rich with bias.And not only is that cool writing, I love that Frank does this because it makes the characters feel very different.But also,
we're getting a sense that maybe the Tleilaxu have some blind spots because we as the reader read that and we go, oh yeah, that's a good point.And he's like, well, that foolish fish speaker or whatever.
And we go, oh, maybe everything we hear from them is not gonna be like whole cloth or wholesale or whatever.
Definitely.And this whole book is littered with this type of writing where we follow one group or one character who has a very skewed perspective because of their culture, their upbringing.I mean, the Bene Gesserit are a clear example.
And so this asks us, the reader, to be critical of what we are reading.So that's really what elevates this story beyond just the surface layer for sure.
Throughout this entire Tleilaxu chapter, we are meant to be critical of what we're reading and not take it at face value, but also through the chapters where we meet Miles or where we meet Lucilla or Odraid.
We're supposed to question these people's beliefs.Now, another important piece of information we get from this council meeting is that the Tleilaxu have developed face dancers 2.0.
who are even better than the face dancers we've met in the first four books. Except maybe the Bene Gesserit, the Tleilaxu have not tested Face Dancer 2.0s yet against a fully trained Reverend Mother.
So that's still to be seen, but they know for sure that literally the Ixians, the Fish Speakers have no idea that there are Face Dancers in their highest seats.
Among their highest councils, literally the Tleilaxu have infiltrated with Face Dancers 2.0. and are obviously helping manipulate and steer the course of these rival factions from the inside.
Nuts.You could be forgiven for assuming going into this chapter that some of the factions that have been named and named in this chapter, the Ixians, the Guild, Tleilax, Bene Gesserit, that they're all separate entities.
But it really does seem like the universe from this reading is mostly Bene Gesserit and Tleilaxu.
and then like puppet organizations that don't really know what's going on, either being manipulated by Bene Gesserit planning or by the literal Tleilaxu on the heads of their like highest councils.It's crazy.
We're finally getting a clearer picture of the political structure, and it seems like there's two dogs at the top of the doggy pile.And it appears to be Benny Jezra on one side and Tlalaxu on the other.
And they're both chair-shaped.God damn it.That's right.
Two chair dogs on top of the doggy pile. Okay, another wild piece of information we get from this chapter.
The Masters, this internal group of leaders of the Tleilaxu, have been using Ghola technology for thousands of years now to seemingly live forever? Quote, every one of them here had been wakened time after time and goal of flesh.
There was a fleshly continuity in this council that no other people had ever achieved.Merlot himself had seen the prophet with his own eyes.Scytale had spoken to Muad'Dib and quotes.
Man.I mean, it makes perfect sense.
If you have the technology to just like reawaken over and over again, fucking why not, you know, like, yeah, forever, as the ruling council for a group that does seem to hold like tribalism and sort of like excluding other casts and things like that.
For sure.And this is also, I think the fear when we talk about like life extending technologies or medicine in the real world, we think, well, it's going to be the top 1% who can afford it, who are going to hoard that for themselves.
And it's just going to increase wealth disparity.We see that at the nth degree here, we have immortal top 1%.And then all of the fucking face dancers are just like expendable mules.
Yep.Yeah.I mean, it's a very divided society for sure.And we see here at the top 1% get to live forever using technology, mind you, that was discovered in Dune Messiah.Yeah.
And Woff does note that really the only other faction who comes close to achieving this sort of singular continuity of rulership is perhaps the Bene Gesserit because of their Reverend Mother rituals, spice rituals, and other memory.
They too can tap into ancestral memories in a similar way where the Tleilaxu have all of their memories when they regenerate.Weird stuff.And horrible that fleshly continuity is a word that they would use to describe that.
I'm going to start saying that like, yeah.Oh, you want to know about my fleshly continuity?I'm from California.
All right.Chapter five wraps up as Woff declares that this is the moment, folks, that we have been preparing for for thousands of years. The time for action is now.This is where the Tleilaxu strike and rise up."
And so the council agrees, everyone votes, and Sightail is given the order to arm the faithful, whatever that means.
And that's where this council meeting and this chapter ends.
All right, well, chapter six, we are jumping around flashbacks, flash forwards.But chapter six introduces us to a character we have not met yet.Yeah, but we have been told about at least once, I think twice, which is Shiana Brugge.Mm hmm.
And chapter six kicks off where Shiana is atop a sand dune on Arrakis.We're back on Arrakis.We're back.We're back, baby. and there's an approaching sandworm.
And as Shiana waits, we get some background on where she came from and kind of what her story is.Now, most of the chapter is a flashback, but in the present, all we know is that she is being observed by distant observers.
This might be a demonstration of her mysterious power.Again, Terraza says she can potentially control the sandworms.So perhaps this is her demonstrating that it wasn't just a flute.
So in the flashback, we see Shiana's just unbelievable introduction to the Rackus priesthood, as well as her tragic loss of everyone she knew.And this happens three years prior to the beginning of chapter six, you know, the present tense.
And on a day like any other, where she was just going about being a young child in a village out in the desert. She hears screams and burning and all that.She gets home and she sees a worm consuming her entire town.
She sees her father running for safety.He gets eaten.She sees all of the buildings get consumed.And the worm fucking obliterates everything.So it's just her.She's the only survivor.
And in a fit of rage, she runs and jumps up onto the worm and literally punches it.She's like, you bastard. And it just stops.And then she's like, Oh shit, I fucked up.It then takes her straight to Arakeen, now called Keen.
And when it gets there, she hops off.She kind of stares it down.
And she again, has these moments of like, realizing what she's doing where she's very afraid or being very angry at this worm for consuming her entire family and taking everybody from her.
And so she at one point like yells at it and goes, go back to the desert, you bastard.And it's like, okay, and turns around and goes back into the desert.It's very, very strange.
This whole sequence is very, it almost feels like a dream or like a legend that we're witnessing in the moment.And an ornithopter flies over, some priests, get out of the ornithopter and immediately prostrate themselves in front of her.
They're just on their knees like, oh my God, you're the daughter of Shai-Hulud, clearly.You're a daughter of the desert.We saw what just happened, wild.So this is the introduction of Shianna to the priesthood.
Now once everybody is together, the priesthood has this meeting in Cain, talking about this girl.And among the kind of high council of the racist priesthood, there's a split decision.
Some are like, no, she was riding on the worm, that's not allowed, she should be punished for the crime.And then the other half of the council is like, but she's also clearly special.And we treat the God, the divided God, as this deity.
So we can't kill her.What are you talking about?You know?So the high priest, Hedley Tuick,
I was like, oh my God, Leo is gonna love this.
I know.Well, Hedley Tuick decided to test her.He decides as the head priest, the high priest, he's going to see if what she can do is really a thing or if it was just a fluke.So they fly her out to the desert.
They put her with a thumper, a little recreation of the old Fremen prop, and two worms showed up to this thumper.And instead of eating her the way everybody kind of expects to happen, they wait in front of her.
Fully emerged from the sand, just chilling in front of her. And it says they're even within, I think, three meters.So like nine feet from this girl.
And Shiana, again, has the flush of like, fear and she's really like, Oh, my God, I'm gonna die.But also, fuck you, worms, you ate everyone. So she steps toward them, like, fine, kill me, reunite me with my family.Let's see what happens, you know?
They back up as she walks toward them.Again, very mysterious, very surreal.Now, eventually she tells them to leave.Okay, go back to the desert.And they do, they leave.And the Rakish priesthood is like, holy shit.Oh my God.
She's the Worm Whisperer.The Wormsperer. We should tell the Bene Gesserit.And sure enough, the Bene Gesserit, they send off their Harry Potter owls to fly across space and time.
And the next day, their messages are on the way to Chapter House, where of course we know Terraza receives those messages and begins their plan for how to take advantage of this interesting new development.
Yeah.Wild.You put it perfectly, I think.It does feel like this chapter, we are witnessing a legend take place in real time.Because all of this feels very legendary.
This feels very Luke Skywalker got his family killed and rises to become the chosen one. Shiana, entire family killed, turns out that she can control or at least influence the worms in some way.
Unprecedented powers and abilities, and of course, the Church of the Divided God is going to both fear this, but also desperately want to control this.And of course, every other faction in the galaxy is also going to be like, what does this mean?
given the holy connection that the Worms have, you know, because of Laetitu, but even before that, because of the Fremen and Shai-Hulud and all the religious ties on Arrakis to the Worms themselves, makes this kind of a holy event that's just taken place.
I mean, going all the way back to Dune, Paul, calling upon his first worm ride, calling upon the worm and realizing that this giant worm was huge, and that already he can see the mythology building around this moment that he's living in present tense.
Paul had that kind of foresight and awareness of like, Oh, yeah, this is part of the visions that I've seen. Shianna doesn't have any of that.She's a child.
But I can very much hear Paul's voice in this scene going, like, this is what they're going to remember forever and ever.This is what they're going to talk about for hundreds, maybe thousands of years, is this girl riding atop Shai-Hulut.
And how quickly, too, we see the narrative be shaped by the people who want to shape the narrative, right?Like, she is not just a child who came on the back of Shai-Hulut.She is the daughter of Shai-Hulut.
And that is interpretive.You've gone beyond just reporting what you've seen.You are saying, we think there is more to this.
Yeah.I mean, the clearest example of a misinterpretation is her dancing.Oh, my God.Yeah.She dances because she's like a panicked child who just lost her entire family and accidentally rode on the back of a deadly worm.
And she's like, afraid of the priests because the priests clearly have this like sort of totalitarian rule over the local populace as we learn.So she's afraid and disoriented and confused and grieving and shocked.
And the only thing she knows how to do there is just dance.Do this like rhythmic dance.
It almost, I think it is like the sand dancers that we see in Children of Dune who all like tie themselves together and they like dance until they pass out and all that.
Yeah, and the priests literally fall to their knees. They're like, oh my goodness, she's asking Shai-Halud for forgiveness.
She's doing the sand dance and they like, they participate, they like clap to like distract her.It's like this whole thing and they do it.
This thing has already been mythologized in a way that is already far from the truth of what actually took place.And I'm sure it will continue to be so.We're already seeing the legend of Shiana Brugge being built in real time in front of us.
It's so funny, we can't even help ourselves from like starting to talk about these deeper things.This is supposed to be the summary.That's right.Oh, okay.Let's quickly, we're going to take a break.We're going to take a little ad break here.
Don't go anywhere.We're going to actually start the takeaways after this break.So don't go anywhere, dear listener.We'll be right back right after this.
Let's dive deeper into today's reading with a couple of takeaways.
Starting with our first takeaway today, Tag's Beliefs. Yeah.So the conversation between Miles Tagg and Reverend Mother Superior Tarazza is fascinating and is layered with subtext.So we want to take a look at this discussion a bit more closely.
And in particular, we want to hone in on some interesting ideas that Frank is exploring through the character of Miles Teg and through his role within the larger Bene Gesserit, where sort of he fits into the plan of it all.
Yeah.And I think to start, let's just cover some basic biographical details, cover some of the stuff we learned about him.And Teg, kind of feels like I'm describing myself, is old and tall. Same, Teg, same.
But Teg's a little older than me, just a couple years older than me.Uh-huh.Because he's four standard years short of 300 years old.Holy shit.And he's also more than two meters tall.Uh-huh.For American people, that's over six, it's like six, seven.
It's like six feet, seven inches tall.He's taller than that.
Tall dude and old. Now, he is also, very important, certified hottie.Hottie McPotty.Because he bears a shocking, uncanny resemblance to Duke Leto Atreides. Now, we say it's uncanny, but it's really shocking.
Teg describes having seen a painting of the Duke Leto Atreides, and he says it was like looking in a mirror.Try to imagine that, it's pretty wild.But Duncan is a Gola, right?And will need his memories restored at some point, probably.
And Teg realizes very quickly what his role will be. quote my likeness to the atreides duke teg said you will use me to restore his original memories oh end quote and terraza confirms quote in eight or ten years yes end quote Wow.
Again, shockingly candid from the Reverend Mother Superior Tarazza.Just like, yep.
No double speak here.She's not trying to obscure.She's giving her mintat good data so he can make good computations.Right, right.It's also worth noting that Duncan is like 12-ish at the beginning of the book.
And at the time that Tag and Tarazza are meeting, Duncan is six years old.So she says in eight or 10 years, this is six years ago.
So in the present tense, where Duncan's doing cartwheels in the courtyard, we've got maybe a couple years left before he is potentially going to be restored and reawoken.It's very exciting.
You know, I was trying to untangle the timeline in my head of when Shiana is discovered versus when the Duncan Gola is created versus when miles is reinstated as Bashar, you know.
I can't quite square it, maybe I just need to sit down and write it out pen and paper, but it seems like this GOLA initiative has been going on for much longer than the Shianna discovery.
And so even this current GOLA of Duncan, if he was six years old and Shianna was only discovered what, three, four years ago based on the last chapter we read? It seems like the Bene Gesserit are adapting their plan in real time.
Like maybe this Duncan wasn't originally meant to go to Arrakis and influence Shianna, but now they're prepping him for that because of this huge discovery.It makes me wonder what the previous 11 Duncans were meant for.
You know, what was the Gola plan all about then, if Shianna was discovered so recently?The timeline is a little fuzzy for me, but maybe we'll get answers.
There's another consideration.So you're right.I don't know what the 11 previous Gholas were for.We might find out we might not like actually cannot remember.But I will say we don't know how old Duncan is when they get him.
So we know he's six years old at the time of Teg and Terraza talking.We do not know that they've had him for six years. because just like Lato gets Duncan as like a mid-20s, 30s, 40s, I don't know how old Duncan's supposed to be.
Golas can be delivered at any age, seems like.Again, we don't know a ton about how the Golas are produced, just wanted to point that out.So it's possible.
That's a great point, yeah.
Yeah, it's possible they've had him not a full six years, but it does seem like they had this Gola and then only found out about Shiana a few years into his training and have had to pivot.It's unclear if that was always sort of anticipated.
Yeah, for instance, I do not think their plan with the previous 11 goals was to reawaken their memories.Because they did not call on tag for those previous 11 goals. Right?This is the first time they're calling him out of retirement.
And from the end of Teg's chapter, it seems like the reason they've kept Teg in reserve on this far off planet is so that if they ever need to reawaken a Gola's memories, they have someone who looks just like the Atreides Duke.
So the fact that it's this 12th Gola that they're calling him back for, they're like, well, we need you back now because we are going to reawaken this Duncan for a particular thing.
Like all the stars are now aligning and the chess pieces we've had sitting in different places, it's time to bring them all together.
I mean, the Bene Gesserit are very much believers in that one idea that like success equals preparation times timing.You know, like the equation of success is actually just being prepared for the moment when it arrives.
You know, sprinkle a little bit of luck and that's how you become successful. the Bene Gesserit are always preparing and waiting for the right time and manufacturing as much luck as they can.So that's a great point.I think you're spot on there.
Yeah.To quote Moeheim from the Villeneuve's second part, we don't hope, we plan.
But it does seem, I think you're right.I think that they are pivoting.But I also think, although they are very careful about Kwisatz Haderach, and they're clearly very cautious about accidentally awakening a new one.
I mean, they are keeping Duncan around, which seems very auspicious.And then they have these Atreides lookalikes in the wings.
Yeah, so we'll have to see but clearly Shiana is a catalyst for the Benning Jesuit pulling out their big guns and Mobilizing pieces that haven't been mobilized yet, right?
Well, speaking of one of those pieces, let's return to Miles Tegg, who is a critical piece of the Bene Gesserit plans, and let's dig a little bit deeper.
So I would say that even beyond his biography and physical features, which are all very fascinating and play into a lot of Bene Gesserit plans, what I found
super interesting was Teg's belief system that we learn about throughout this chapter, his ideals that he holds on to.Because, I mean, the chapter outright says this, they are molded almost entirely by the Bene Gesserit.
He was raised by the Bene Gesserit.He was bred by the Bene Gesserit as part of a Bene Gesserit plan. But it's really interesting to see some sprinkles of independence in there as well.
This is a Mentat, Gola, Supreme Bashar who needs to be able to think and operate independently and not just be like a yes-lording drone all the time to be his most effective.
And I think we would have thought that being raised by the Bene Gesserit and being indoctrinated by the Bene Gesserit would make you a yes-lording drone in a lot of ways.
But as we're seeing in this book, there is an innate sense of independent thought that exists within different factions within the Bene Gesserit.
We have people like Shuang Yu, who are like, I am doing my part, but I am putting myself in a position where I can catch tragedy before it occurs.Or like I can- damage control the fuck up that I think you're making.
I also noted that his daughter is like you are reminding me more and more of a reverend mother.And even Tarazza is like, he is very much like a reverend mother himself.
So I see all of that as also being an agent who is going to make a decision one way or the other based on his own internal compass, which yes, calibrated by the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, but still being guided by his own sense of what's right and wrong and stuff like that.
Yeah, absolutely.And I think one of the clearest ways we see that is his belief in what he calls the sisterhood's, quote unquote, moral purpose.Yeah.This is a really great quote from the chapter.Quote, it was never a question of justice.
Justice required resort to law, and that could be a fickle mistress, subject always to the whims and prejudices of those who administered the laws. No, it was a question of fairness, a concept that went much deeper.
The people upon whom judgment was passed must feel the fairness of it.End quote.I mean, there's so many layers there.I mean, that is such a Benny Jezret statement, just dripping with this like cynicism and irony.
And it is in line very much with Teg's beliefs as well. This is one system of belief that he adopted through his Bene Gesserit training.And this is his worldview as well.
I think in a meta context, even stepping outside of just this being a Bene Gesserit and Teg thing, this also screams to me as being a Frank thing, a classic Frank thing, where he is questioning the efficacy of, in this example, codified laws that are created by imperfect and corrupt rulers.
kind of tying all the way back into Frank's warning against blind faith and blind trust in charismatic rulers or in institutions as the end all be all solution to all human problems.
This is Frank perhaps questioning that as well through the Benny Jesserit idea here that justice and resorting to laws is a fickle way of administering any sort of judgment. It's interesting though.
I'm curious how you feel about it, but I read this statement and I was kind of like, I guess I get where you're coming from.
I mean, like we live in a real world where there are codified laws and we see the justice system abused and misused all the time.Literally all the time.
Obviously, there's no way of getting around the like, if you're part of the 1% or the powerful and influential, many laws just don't apply to you.Whoops.Even if they are codified and written down, they just don't apply to you.
So yes, there are loopholes.It's an imperfect system.But I read this. moral purpose quote.And I was like, I don't know, man.
This also feels like not the right solution to the idea of passing down judgment, this Bene Gesserit view, because who decides that you are the one that's going to pass the judgment?How come I don't get to pass the judgment?Fuck you, you know?
And then once judgment is passed, who decides, like, this is what is fair and this is what is not fair. And so I don't know, I kind of lean more like sure, codified laws are an imperfect system that gets abused, but not codifying anything.
We can't just be like dealing out justice based on what quote unquote feels fair.Feelings are also just as fickle as law and order might be, written laws might be.
Yeah, I hear what you're saying, for sure.I think part of the statement that I am impressed by is Frank is really avoiding, it's not that you are judging based on what you think is fair.
It is the people upon whom judgment was passed have to feel the fairness of it for proper administration of laws.
It's like what feels fair is something that is much harder to specify.It's really hard to be clear on like what feels fair, what doesn't feel fair.
And that goes a little bit beyond, like maybe the problem is the more specific you get, and codified laws have to be specific, the more chances there are for it to be twisted and mistaken and wrong and all this stuff, the finer the pin you put on it, the more likely you are to get it a little bit wrong.
versus saying, well, the important thing is not to rely solely on litigation, but instead to tap into a sort of gut instinct of what is and is not appropriate or justified.
And although that is also very fickle and changeable, it is something that might be a little bit more consistent looking at a span of 100 years or 10 million people, like a feeling of what is fair,
might be more universal than like, is it legal to have mushrooms in Colorado versus in Nevada?You know, a feeling of, oh, it's fair for you to grow something and eat it or whatever, using kind of a weird example.
But in this weird example, you have a feeling of fairness that is more universal than say, the laws or what state you happen to live in, or what country you happen to live in for different things. I don't know.
It's tough because I think when you get away from theism, you get away from, inevitably, you get away from absolute objective morality.
There is no objective good and bad outside of I've determined that there is some deity who has given us a rubric of yeses and nos.And I think a lot of us who live outside of there is a God who has said this is right and this is wrong.
come to the understanding that it's like, oh, it's societal.It's comes from within.It is sort of like if you really grill someone on like, is it right to kill?And you go, no, it's not right to kill.
What about to defend against Hitler, who has a machine gun?And it's like, okay, yeah, okay, you can get you can kill in that situation.I guess it's all relative, man.I don't know.So that idea of like, seeking out objectivity is difficult.
Tagg's understanding of maybe like objective morality comes down to the sort of continuity of the Bene Gesserit purpose of helping humanity across tens of thousands of years with that sort of hard to pin down goal to just make humanity better.
Like, what does that mean?It kind of depends on the Reverend Mother in charge, but... Yeah, exactly.
And that's where my critique comes in, right?Kind of depends on the Reverend Mother in charge.
It's like, who decides that Reverend Mother gets to pick the judgment or pass the judgment, you know?Like, what if I didn't elect that Reverend Mother?Where's my say in it?
And you make a great point about moral relativity because, yeah, the context matters so much.And even codified laws should be flexible enough to allow for context and to allow for outliers.
But merely going off of what feels fair to both parties is sort of a slippery slope and does sort of change from culture to culture, time to time, generation to generation.
You know, like there there was a time where like owning black people was fair to everyone and society decided that was cool. Not everyone but you know what?I mean the people who are passing the judgment decided.
Yeah, man, this is fair Yeah, and it felt fair to the white people who got to own other humans Totally fair they were like, yeah, this is so so I'm perhaps a bit more cynical because I'm like, okay This maybe feels fair to Tarazza because she's the one in charge But does this feel fair to for example the guards who were punished because they helped Duncan, Idaho, right?
Those guards were clearly like traumatized in a way where they stopped talking to Duncan.What was that fucking punishment?
Yeah.In his chapter, there's a mention of like he said, for everything you can criticize the Bene Gesserit for the one thing you have to kind of admire is their dedication to this long goal.
So I think part of his chapter was acknowledging they fuck up and like the Reverend Mother Superior will fuck up and people fuck up like that's that's fine.That's part of the system.
The thing that is less, I don't know, less changey is the soft goal of like improving humanity, which is the only objective quality that we can extract from any of that.It's like, oh, we want humanity to be better, whatever that fucking is.
But I think you're right, there is still very much... But improving humanity in the Bene Gesserit vision, what they think is improving humanity, which again, speaking to our point of being critical of these views that were presented, is dramatically different from what the Tleilaxu think improving humanity is.
That's true. So which version of improving humanity is actually improving humanity?
Bene Gesserit.Between those two choices, sure.
I find myself being as critical of the Bene Gesserit in these chapters as I am of the Tleilaxu, honestly.And obviously one is hilariously evil and bad, and the other is presented as a bit more protagonist and heroic.But I'm also kind of just like,
I don't know, Benny Jeserit, y'all are acting real cocky and arrogant that you know all the answers, but you did fuck up considering how often Paul and massively fucked up.Yeah, it's interesting.And there's so much to unpack here.
And I'm sure there will be many more conversations like this.But it's interesting that we're digging into these themes.
Yeah, totally characters like miles and what they believe and what they've been taught to believe and how their moral compass has been pointed in a certain direction.
also to as much as I've kind of been playing devil's advocate, I think you really do drive a good point regarding like, if we are talking about, I know that this is not exactly what Teg was talking about.
And I know that these words weren't used in the chapter.
But if we are talking about a sort of moral purpose or an objective fairness that exists outside of codified law, and whatever prejudice of those administering the laws and all that, something that goes beyond prejudice, something that is more substantive, like,
objective morality, a belief in that objective morality is like a dogmatic axiomatic thing.
Like that is a thing that you, even without a god that's doling it out to the universe, a belief in that objective fairness very much lends validity to ideas like heresy.
If you say Shuang Yu is heretical, you go, what does that fucking mean if everyone's kind of just doing their own thing?But as soon as you say, well, the Reverend Mother Superior Tarazza says that this is good, and that is bad.
If you go against that good and bad declaration, that is heresy.Now I start to understand maybe the title of this book. And maybe I start to understand why someone like Lucilla is going, is this heretical?What does that even mean?
What does it mean to be heretical in a non-theistic, cynical organization?Oh, well, if they do have a sort of guiding North Star of we are doing good by humanity, then maybe going against that is heresy.
It's not as simple as you're not following orders.It's you don't believe in the same moral purpose that we do or whatever.Right.So very, very interesting.
And it's really cool to get to take some space and talk about this because for sure, I don't think there's a simple answer, but.
No, it's certainly not a simple answer, and I don't think either of us would claim to have the answer, you know?We're just exploring the ideas here.
Now, continuing with this takeaway, another interesting point is that despite his Atreides lineage, Miles Teg, Teg's view of the Atreides history, and particularly the messy Atreides history with prescience after Paul and Leto and Ghanima,
also really reeks of strong Benny Jester influence.Quote, End quote. That is a strongly held belief of Miles' tag.I loved this quote, particularly that second sentence.
You take the universe as you find it, and you apply your principles where you can.Love that.
More people, I think, should be living by that standard.And I also think this is something that Leite too would agree with as well.
I think he also would want humanity to apply this belief that Miles holds dear.Of course, where it's very quickly turned sideways is the quote continues, and the very next sentence becomes problematic in a very classic Bene Gesserit way.
Quote, absolute commands in the hierarchy were always to be obeyed, end quote.
So there's a little bit of that Bene Gesserit influence creeping back in to truly what I think is a very honorable principle and a well thought out principle that I think even Leto II would be very proud to hear.
A hundred percent.Honestly, I had to Google what nomic means and it's expressed in the nature of short kind of general truths or like rule of conducts.It's like kind of fortune cookie-esque statements.
Yeah.Right.What you find on the top of a Snapple bottle.
Yeah.It's like either a fact about penguins or like, it's bad to do this sometimes. And to your point, I think Leto, mere words, Leto to Atreides, who's just like, words don't fucking mean anything.Nothing means anything.You kind of create meaning.
I think very much so he would appreciate like, yeah, coming up with fortune cookies or coming up with horoscope statements for the day.
Oh my gosh, right, right.
Is not useful.It is more useful to just kind of accept what is around you wordlessly and then kind of apply your principles where you can.
Very, very cool.And similarly, very problematic to be like, oh yeah, if you are given an absolute command, you always obey.It's like, well, no, it's nice to have rebels sometimes.
Now, to wrap up this first takeaway, obviously so much to talk about with Teg, but one thing that I felt was worthy of mentioning here is that Teg is fiercely loyal to the Bene Gesserit, and as we've discussed at length now, his worldview is perhaps shaped very strongly by them.
But he is not blindly faithful to the Bene Gesserit.He is not a yes-lording drone.
And there are multiple hints throughout this chapter that make that clear to us, that make it clear that he is capable of rebelling or pushing back against the sisterhood if they go against his strongly held principles and beliefs.
For one, he never sits down, this guy.Quote, this trait, the analysts agreed, was Tagg's way, probably unconscious, of protesting the sisterhood's authority over him.End quote.
Yeah.I love that.He looms over people as a strategy, like the six, seven, six, eight guy just constantly looming like, yeah, I'll stand too close to you and you can look up at me as you give me meant that data.Fucking awesome.
Yeah.Definitely an interesting trait.And I think even more interesting that the Bene Gesserit themselves kind of overanalyzed this and were like, this is like a subconscious way of him kind of rebelling.
He doesn't want to be put under anyone's thumb because he is so smart and capable and intelligent.So that kind of hints at the idea that he could break away from the sisterhood if he chose to.
There's also clearly the fact that he literally has informants within the sisterhood to this day.He's keeping tabs on them all these years into his retirement.This is definitely a workaholic who cannot leave his job behind him.
And that to me is interesting, that he's keeping tabs on the sisterhood, because at the very start of this chapter, We literally get the quote, quote, Who shall guard the guardians?Who shall see that the guardians commit no offenses?End quote.
It's so good.I mean, who watches the Watchmen, right?
And that to me, who watches the Watchmen?I mean, This, I feel, while Tagg is fiercely loyal to the Bene Gesserit, I think this is also how he sees his own role within them.Who watches the Watchmen?
Miles Tagg watches the Sisterhood, and his loyalty will sustain and will be
unshakable as long as the sisterhood continued to do admirable things, or the things that at least align with his principles, which you kind of have to put an asterisk on because his principles were shaped by the Bene Gesserit.
It all kind of comes full circle, but you do imagine a situation where he, as a Mentat, as a Bashar, as a military leader, as an incredibly capable and skilled person, decides, wait, this I disagree with, get fucked, I'm not doing this, or I'm pushing back on this.
Yeah, I mean, again, if part of his Bene Gesserit indoctrination was giving him a mind to be independent and to be heretical when it's appropriate, then that's good.
Going back to our conversation about kind of objective fairness and rule of law and all that, one of the safeguards you can put into place, and we try to have in place but fail here in the US because of lobbyists, is checks and balances.
The idea of having different orders that can keep each other in check and make sure that everything's good.
He, to your point, was the supreme Bashar, but is a Mentat and clearly has his own kind of view of the Bene Gesserit and his own view of what is fair and his own moral compass.Was it calibrated by the Bene Gesserit?Yeah, for sure.
But I also don't get any sense that he's this brainwashed, you know, drone.And that's also why he is probably one of the only men in the universe that Terraza could not just use the voice on him and get him to do whatever.
He is one of the only people in the universe that Terraza has to come to and ask. She can also command him.
She knows that she can just command him, but she doesn't choose to do that because she knows that he is the sword who needs to be there as a balance and check for everything else that's happening.
Right.And it weakens the sword.If you bend it to your will, you allow the sword to maintain and sharpen itself and utilize itself as is.I mean, the Benny Jezzer are not stupid, right?Like having a bunch of sycophants.
is not effective, that literally degrades and stagnates your institution.
And so the Bene Gesserit, of course, would want extremely capable and extremely independent operatives that, sure, work for them, perhaps have been molded by them, but are not complete and utter drones, like you said. That would be silly of them.
They're much smarter than that.That wastes the asset.It makes a brittle sword if the sword is nothing but loyal to you.
Right.And again, they have seen 40,000 years, 30,000 years of human history.They've seen those institutions fail.Yeah, that are so kind of self praising.
They've seen those fail, again, for what you can say accurately about in criticizing the Bene Gesserit. They have sustained for longer than any other organization in the history of humanity.
And it's because they have people like Tagg that they put in positions of power.
Well, that was one takeaway.Let's talk about our next. There's more to say about Teg, but again, there's more book left.So we'll come back to him, I'm sure.
For our second takeaway today, let's take a look at the Tleilaxu religion, this galaxy wide secret that the Tleilax have kind of hidden from everyone. we get quite a bit of insight into both their religion and their culture.
And I wanted to pause for a second, because as I was reading this chapter, I was like, why have I read this chapter before?And I know that I've read this book before, but I picked apart this chapter once before.
And I was like, why do I remember Googling all these words?I'm like, why do I remember all this back work?It's because in 2022, we did a deep dive to Leilaxu episode. which covers a lot of this ground in just crazy detail.
Like we did, I mean, it really is a full episode on the Bene Tleilax, but very important, it does contain spoilers for every one of Frank's books.
So if you're listening to this book club as a first time listener and you have not yet read the rest of Heretics or all of Chapter House, hold off for now.
But for those of you who have read all the books and you're just looking for a brush up on Tleilaxu culture and stuff, feel free to check out that episode.
And we also know, yes, good Lord, the terminology thrown at us in this chapter does deserve its own kind of deep etymological dive.There's a lot of interesting stuff to glean from individual words.
Yeah, but we don't really have time for that in today's episode.So we're going to save it for a future conversation.
We also have talked about maybe putting together a document to make it nice and easy for you to understand what's being said, and to understand the research that Frank did, as he put together this culture, aka Arabic.
But in any case, there will be lots of opportunities to talk about the Tleilaxu in this book.There's more to come on that for sure.
OK, with those caveats out of the way, let's hone in on some big religious revelations we get about the Tleilaxu from today's reading, starting with their view on Leito II.We touched on this a bit in the summary.
Quote, all through the bad times of the prophet Leito II, not God emperor, but God's messenger,
all through the famines and the scattering, through every painful defeat at the hands of lesser creatures, through all of those agonies the Tleilaxu had built their patient forces for this moment."So there we have it.
They don't see Lei-Totu as a god, and certainly not a god emperor.They see Lei-Totu as a prophet, as God's messenger. And anyone who has studied Islam or was raised in an Islamic household like me will know exactly where this is drawn from.
Jesus not being a son of God, but merely a prophet of God is one of the biggest differences between Christianity and Islam.
And in fact, the Tleilaxu throughout this whole chapter are very Muslim coded with words like Islamiat and Shariat just all over.
In fact, you can Google basically every new Tleilaxu term that's presented in this chapter, and almost all of them are directly pulled from Arabic or Turkish or Persian or Islamic tradition and terminology.
That's clearly where Frank tapped into to create the Tleilaxu culture.And I will say, stepping back a little bit, this is where I have a bit of a critique for Frank Herbert and for this book.
Because for the first time in the Dune Saga, I feel that Frank... has become somewhat lazy and problematic with the way he's directly lifting from Eastern terminology.Of course, he does this throughout all of his books.
The Fremen are very Middle Eastern, North African, Bedouin coded, very much drawn inspiration from those cultures and religions. But here it starts to feel somewhat problematic to me.
Considering how reviled the Tleilaxu are, it starts to rub me the wrong way that they are so heavily coded as effectively brown people and Eastern cultures.And this depiction of the Tleilaxu certainly lacks the nuance that the Fremen had.
The Fremen were such an interesting
exploration of many of the Eastern cultures and religions and traditions that Frank pulled from, and then envisioned what they would look like as they evolved 10,000 years into the future, 20,000 years into the future.
Here for the Tleilaxu, it feels like Frank pulled up a glossary of Islamic words and then just picked and applied random shit to the Tleilaxu.Many of the words are used in totally incorrect ways that aren't even meant to be nuanced in any sense.
Selimlik, I looked it up, it's basically like a room for the men in a palace.It's like a- It's like a bathhouse kind of thing, right?Yeah.
And in this chapter, Selimlik is clearly some sort of breeding room for the women, is how Woff sort of hints at it. And it's like, I don't see any like larger thematic reason to change that or like what the purpose of that would be.
Just feels like we picked a random word from the glossary and popped it in there and used it for the Tleilaxu.
Anyway, I'm getting a bit on my soapbox here, but that's kind of how I feel and how I've always felt about heretics is like, wow, these people that we are meant to like really dislike and be critical of sure do borrow a lot of shit from Eastern culture and Islamic tradition in a way that doesn't feel smart and interesting like it does with the Fremen.
And like we know Frank is capable of, you know, it feels like he kind of phoned it in for this one.
Yeah, that's totally valid.I think the thing that seems to be missing is the sort of transformative application of his research.Because again, when you say like, Islam yet, as being like the study of or the language of Islam.
And then that's just the language that the Tlailaxi speak.I also don't know because this early into the book, we're being introduced to the Tlailaxi who have been reviled and hated for the last five books, four books.
We are being introduced to them as a more subtle culture than we've ever been led to believe they are.Right, right.This is the misunderstood culture that is distant and feels alien to the readers.
And how do you make them feel alien to predominantly Western readers, you make them as Eastern coded as possible.You just Yeah, use as much Arabic as possible.
Because everyone in the 1980s in the US reading the sci fi books would not know any of this shit.
totally so it's like okay so he very quickly makes them feel very unfamiliar to people in the 80s who are reading this book for sure that's not going to age very well especially as globalization continues and now we have people who were raised islamic reading this book going oh oh this feels like you're vilifying me yeah i don't know that yeah that is something that may just get worse as time goes on
But we'll have to see how the Tleilaxu evolve fully, because again, we can't really say that much about later stuff in the book.But naturally, I think this is just the beginning.
And how the Tleilaxu are actually portrayed is going to have a lot to do, I think, with how it comes across for me.But so far, I think everything you've said is totally valid.It is the most one for one lifting of any Arabic terms and
terms of Islam, it is just like one for one.There's very little transformation that seems to be applied to any of it.
And although I think it does accomplish making it feel very unfamiliar to us as readers, like suddenly we're given all this vocab that we've never been shown before in this book.
And some of it is a little bit different than what it might have been if you knew what a Salamalik was before you read this book.You're like, oh, this is not, oh, this is different.So it still keeps you a little bit off guard.
We are also being told they're more subtle and nuanced than maybe they've been seen from the outside.But we'll see.We'll fucking see, because if they are through and through just kind of awful, it's a bad look for Frank, for sure.
And I think that's totally valid.
Yeah, totally.There's already some tough looks, like the way they treat their women or the implication of how they treat their women as breeders, basically, because Woff is like, sometimes I go to the slum like to drop off my sperm for the women.
Yeah. That's already a little problematic, obviously, the way they are so rigidly segmented and classist and xenophobic as a society.
It leans into a lot of the stereotypes of how Western cultures have perceived Eastern cultures for many, many years.
Yeah, and similarly to we spend one chapter with Teg on his homeworld, and we leave that chapter loving Teg, we spend one chapter with Tilwath, and we're like, ew, what a weird chapter.
Exactly, right, right.There's a clear emotional intention there.
Yeah, so yeah, we'll have to see.
Yeah, totally, totally.We have much more book left to go.
Yes, it's super interesting to look at the Tleilaxu and to know that this whole time, from the moment that Scytale was killed by Polytrates, and in the following thousands of years, they have seen the Atreides as prophets, as messengers from God.
Even the God Emperor, Leto himself, was considered to be a prophet, which is super fascinating.Also because they clearly believe their religion is the only correct religion.
Yeah, strange.Normally people are very egalitarian about that, but no, no.They're like, no, ours is the only right one, right? But they believe that the rest of the galaxy has been duped or misled, right?
Especially all of these churches and faiths that follow God Emperor Leto II as God.They go, oh, you're almost there.You almost got it.But you weren't wise enough to kind of peel back that first layer of the onion.
And their disdain for these quote unquote, Powendas, right?These people who aren't belonging to the Tleilaxu insight of the universe. reveals to us how extremely isolationist and xenophobic Pleilaxu culture is.
Quote, to go out among the Powinda could soil even the mightiest.End quote. It's just so disgusting being among them with their stupid belief systems.So even Tilwath, right?
Even Wath, the Mahai, the Abdel, the master of masters, he goes out on a little conference outing, right?Little work trip, business trip, comes back and has to like reprove himself, not soiled and disgustingly ruined by all those shitty people.
It's a really bold interpretation.It's really fascinating to look at.
And in fact, the thing that's kind of unifying and keeping Tleilaxu society together, the fleshly continuity and all, is this deeply religious belief system, which is, I think, true for many cultures around the world.
Quote, the paradox of kinship ties and a sense of societal identity that permeated the kell from mashaykh down to the lowliest dhamal was not a paradox to Waf. We work for the same God."
So across the clan of the Tleilaxu, from the highest master of masters down to the lowest domestic workers, people like the face dancers who are literal mules who cannot reproduce on their own, the whole of society is committed to the same goal.
And it's not a paradox to Woff because he understands they are all unified by a belief in God.
And the tenets apply to everyone, even Woff.
Has to come back and go through a cleansing ritual because he's been in dirty, filthy, disgusting, powinda space.
He's interacted with those Pawinda fucks, and he has to come back and do the same thing that a face dancer who's out on a secret mission might have to do when they can return after a mission.Like a no-name face dancer.
It applies to all of them equally, no matter what.And there is no paradox there.We work for the same God.
I mean, to Teg's point, it probably feels fair.It feels like fair judgment, because it's applied to everyone across the board.
Clearly, Tleilax's society does not have the issue that, oh, I don't know America has, where if you're the master of masters, you just are exempt from judgment.Fuck that.No, you got to clean yourself.You went to another country.Take a shower.
Take a shower you were among the unbelievers Disgusting wash that airplane off of you.
Yeah, you were in JFK Airport good lord.You are carrying half of the fatal diseases that the planet has devised.Yeah, it's interestingly egalitarian, considering how segmented their society is, for sure.
The final line of this chapter also really does drive that nail into the coffin of what the toy lacks you think of outsiders, right?Quote, this Atreides manifesto was the very kind of thing the masses of Pawinda would follow to their doom. End quote.
Idiots.Those lemmings being thrown off of cliffs by Disney documentary makers.Did you know that?It was all like, uh, did you know about this about no lemmings.They like don't follow themselves.They don't follow other lemmings mindlessly.
There was Disney documentary people and they like threw them off the cliffs. as like part of a constructed narrative is crazy.I might be telling that badly, but look into it.Lemmings have gotten a bad rap.Point is Pawinda, not like lemmings.
No, no, no.They follow mindlessly like some other unnamed creature. Yeah, very interesting.The Tleilaxu are loving this manifesto.I mean, this is why WAFF, Master of Masters, is like, yeah, let's help disseminate it.
Let's send this manifesto everywhere, unedited.Let's not change anything. because it's gonna dupe those losers who are out here just chewing on their shoelaces.They don't follow the Shariat.
They're dumb, and it's gonna continue to maintain our spiritual lead.We know who God is.They don't.You know, even if they're kind of close to figuring it out, they haven't yet.So we've got the advantage.We've got the leverage.
Yeah.It really paints a picture of what their worldview is.Yeah.Speaking of worldviews, right?Like Miles has these principles and the way he operates and looks out at the universe that he inhabits.And so do the Tleilaxu.Yeah.
They have these principles that are very seeped in their religion, and it's responsible for their entire worldview, for the entire structure of their society, for the entire way even their leaders behave, but also how the lowliest Dhammal behaves.
It's interesting stuff, and it gives us the Tleilaxu perspective in a way we've never gotten before.
And you know, I think maybe the challenge here, and this is this is Frank's throwing down the gauntlet, is to abandon what we know about the Tleilaxu, or what we think we know about the Tleilaxu.
Because I also have to admit, I spent a chapter with Teg and ended up loving him. no fucking wonder, he's exactly what I know from having read Dune.He is like the epitome of the Atreides cool guy.
And then I spend a chapter with the Tleilaxu and I go, ew, gross, because I have 3,000 pages of hating the Tleilaxu under my belt.That's right, that's right.
So looking at the admirable qualities of the Tleilaxu, I think it is pretty incredible that the master of masters The Abdul, who wakens the city, he has to go through the same cleansing rituals that everyone has to go through.
No one is above their devotion to God.No one is above that ceremony.And whether or not I agree with their religious worldview, That doesn't super matter.That's never mattered.
And I shouldn't judge it because it's different than what I believe or however I believe.So looking at like, okay, so we know that they've cultivated an intentional pattern of being underestimated by the universe.We know that for a fact.
Can we abandon our prejudice toward the Tleilaxu?And maybe that's the challenge.
There's certainly much more Tleilaxu in this book, so better get comfortable rubbing shoulders with them, you know?Yeah.
You know they're going to take a shower after rubbing shoulders with you.
That's true.We're dirty, dirty poindos, you know?I mean, I get it.Fair.
So that is our second takeaway, little peek into the Tleilaxu culture.And yeah, I would say what I'm going to try to do for the rest of the book is try to distance myself from
that initial kind of gut clenching around Tleilaxu stuff, like, yeah, maybe it'll be a very interesting story.
I think if we treat them as amicably as we treat the Bene Gesserit, who literally we've been told in this book so far, are quietly killing babies.
And, you know, manipulating the universe in the same way that the Tleilaxu are.So why is that good?And this is bad.And I think that's the challenge, and I'm gonna give that to you listeners.That's your challenge, that's your homework.
It's also my, I'm gonna try it too.Maybe it's gonna be pointless, and by the end of the book we'll go, ew, God, the Toyotas fucking suck.But maybe it'll give new insights into this book.
That's true. OK, those are our takeaways for today's episode.Two big ones, but so much to talk about already in this book.Let's take a breather.Let's cleanse ourselves in preparation for this upcoming meal of spice morsels.
Indeed.We'll see you in just a minute, folks.Welcome back, everybody.
Hope you're hungry.We got some spice morsels for you before we wrap up today. our first Morsel Batman.Oh, but not that one.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
So in last episode's reading, we see Patran, the guard who we see kind of watching over Duncan, Idaho, referred to Bashar Teg's Batman.And it was brought up again today.So we figured we'd take a moment to talk about it.
And the word Batman refers to, particularly in the British Armed Forces, quote, an officer's personal servant, end quote.
Cool.Yeah, so this is the personal servant to Bashar Tegh.Now, in looking up the etymology of this word, because I was like, what?Why is a batman your personal servant?The word actually goes back to the servant in charge of the bat horse.
My God, sounds terrifying, but really it's just a pack horse. which is carrying the officer's stuff, pulling the Latin bastum for pack saddle through old French to become bat.
So pack saddle horse that carries the sword and the gear, the officer's gear, that through French became bat horse. and then the guy in charge of the bat horse became the Batman.Fantastic.
And as much as the sort of like personal servant could seem like a menial thing, I don't know, like a lowly station, we're pretty confident that Patran is generally treated pretty well, considering Teg's guiding principles include, quote, loyalty upward and downward in the hierarchy, end quote.
So, although Patran is the lowly Batman to Miles Tagg, we're sure Tagg is just as loyal to Patran as he is to Tarazza, which is saying quite a bit.
That's right.Now I know what Patran sounds like in my head.
Where's Rachel?I don't know.Where's Duncan?Where's Duncan?I don't know.Where's Shiana?Where's Shiana?It's time for lunch. Tag!Tag!Let's tag!Tag!I was making a souffle!
I burnt the souffle!Tag!Help!Alright, morsel number two!Oh my god, we gotta talk about chair dogs.
Chair dogs, chair dogs, chair dogs.Okay.Chair dogs are, I can't believe I have to explain this.Chair dogs are dogs that are engineered into living furniture.They are literally exactly what you think.They are a dog in the shape of a chair.Yeah.
It's awful. It's horrible.It's one of Frank's worst ideas, objectively speaking.It never should have made its way into any sort of literature, but here we are having to read it and having to explore it. Also, fur-niture.
Just leave it at that.It's furniture.
Digging a little bit deeper into chair dogs, unfortunately, Terraza's office, we were told in the first couple of chapters of the book, has a few chair dogs.She even sits in one of them.
Quote, Terraza sat back and waited for the chair dog to adjust itself to the new position, end quote.Literally, this thing is fucking alive. And we'll adjust to you to make you as comfortable as possible because it's alive again.Reminder.
Luckily, in today's reading, we're told that Teg's house doesn't have a single chair dog inside, folks, because, and this is a huge plus one to Miles Teg as a person, a huge green flag.He fucking hates chair dogs and will not own any of them.
He is an antique surrounded by antiques, as Terraza explains. Now, the history of chair dogs goes beyond Dune, folks, believe it or not.This is fucking wild.
As far as we can tell, based on our research, Frank Herbert's horrendous creation of chair dogs first appeared in his novel, Whipping Star, which was published back in 1977, so long before Heretics of Dune was published.
Nearly a decade, I believe, before Heretics of Dune.And in that novel, in Whipping Star, we get a bit more information about chair dogs. We learned that chair dogs are, quote, a product of genetic shaping, gene surgery, and selection.
What possible difference could it make that a chair dog was an animal, however remotely descended?End quote.Makes a lot of fucking difference, I will say.
But remotely descended.Remotely descended.Sure.You know, this isn't Fido after a painful surgery.This is remotely descended, thank God.Sure.
I'm going to go ahead and call that an orange flag that you're defending that. Moving on, in that same scene in Whipping Star, we learn that they eat food, specifically, quote, that food is an endless cereal chain of protein, end quote.
Yeah.Just protein chains.
They're just downing protein shakes every day.Okay.We have one more quote from the Whipping Star that tells us a bit more about Cherdox.Quote. The chair dog is flesh, which is ecstatic in its work."End quote.Yeah.Yep.
So the chair dogs are happy, folks.They just can't get enough of you sitting in them.Yeah.And honestly, if you think about it, if you really think about it, dear listener, you're the monster. for not sitting in your chair, doc.
OK, so have a heart and sit on your biologically, genetically engineered, living, breathing creature seat of a dog.
Do it or you're a monster.Yeah.You bastard.What are you going to do?Not sit on your chair shaped dog. Have a heart, take a seat, right?
Okay, there you go, folks.There's your Spice Morsel on chair dogs.It's utterly awful.Great job, Leo, on doing that whipping star research.Thank you.
Because frankly, like Frank just kind of mentions chair dogs in this book and doesn't say anything else about it.
No, there's a conversation about we'll have to talk about what things are at some point, just like maybe between this book and Chapter House.Yeah, it's two characters talking about chair dogs and their like purpose in the universe.
It's very, it's an interesting conversation.
I mean, we do a lot of speculating on this show about what was going on in Frank's head.Yeah, here's where my speculation stops, because I simply cannot fathom what was going on in Frank's head when he came up with this.
I feel like I said this at some point, I don't know when we were talking about this, but I want to reiterate the fact that tag is such a lovable character, and is so coded as the right perspective.
Yeah, yeah, the fact that he hates chair dogs, feels like Frank, acknowledging the terrible thing he's done.And having people like Tarazza just be totally chill with them.
Another indication of like look how fucked up and weird the universe is like I kind of feel like Frank knew Fully how fucked up and weird it was and now he's using that intentionally.
It's very cool Again, if not for tag, I would go I think Frank likes the maybe Frank Hicks hates dogs.
It's dogs He's like, you know, you can make dogs better take away their autonomy make them chairs It's like ill Frank, but then he has tag as this like deeply sympathetic character So we'll have to wait and see
Our final morsel today, kind of a grab bag of questions answered.Part of this goes back to last episode, right?We were speculating, we didn't really know where the Duncan Golas were coming from, or the Bene Gesserit making them themselves.
Why are they being assassinated by the Tleilaxu, if the Tleilaxu are making them, like what's happening?As well as like, what other factions are there?Like the Guild and Choam, we're not hearing about them at all in the first few chapters.
Are they even still around? Some of the curtain, more of the curtain, has been pulled back in these last three chapters, and we have some answers to those speculations, so we wanted to clear some of that up.
The Duncan Golas quickly appear to be provided by the Tleilaxu for the Bene Gesserit.Terraza tells Teg,
in regards to Duncan, which is so funny to me because, again, we meet Duncan, Gola Duncan, at the time of God Emperor, and it's noted that even like Moneo, like an old man Moneo, is much faster and stronger than the Duncan Golas.
They're an outdated model, as he says. Quote, his Prana Bindu inheritance has been altered by the Bene Tleilax at our orders, end quote.So this Duncan, this 12 year old Duncan is up to date.
He is as fast and reflexive as the common Bene Gesserit acolyte.So he is not an outdated model any longer.But this does pose a new question.Why would the Bene Tleilax be working for slash with the Bene Gesserit?And then why assassinate the
Golas, like, hey, we sold you a Gola.Oops, we also killed it.What a strange flex.Clearly, there are plans within plans, as hinted by Woff's musings.Quote, and the Gola on Gammu, this Gola at this time was worth all the waiting.
We don't know yet.We'll find out, I guess.We'll keep reading.
Duncan, once again, super important to every single person in the story.
I actually do.I brought for this recording session, my Arrakis runs on Duncan mug.So it's true.Now we also get reference to the guild from Woth.
He tells his counselors and the master of masters tells his counselors, the spacing guild would never turn against them because the Tleilaxu are the guild's quote, only secure source of melange end quote.
Now, this throwaway line does clue us in to how the kind of mighty guild has fallen, that it's now under the thumb of the Tleilaxu.But they are still around, and they are still using spice.
And of course, the conference that Wath attended also had a Qom representative present, and we learned that, quote, most of Qom's people were secret atheists who looked on all religion as suspect, end quote. Hover Mallow.Money is my religion.
Money is my religion, baby.Baby.All the Wall Street bros working at the Chome Stock Exchange.
My religion is the grind.My profit is Bitcoin.Do you have a minute to talk about our Lord and Savior, the blockchain?
Nevertheless, to wrap up this morsel, it does sound like many of the old factions we know and love are still around and kicking.
Although clearly, again, the power dynamics have shifted and, like I said before, it really does feel like a universe with the Bene Gesserit doing their Bene Gesserit thing.
the Bene Tleilax doing their Bene Tleilax thing, and, of course, the unknown Lost Ones returning from the scattering.
And that's Heretics of Dune, to begin.
That's right.Okay.Those are our spice morsels.Hopefully we have sated your appetite.We also have some homework for you, dear listener, to round out this episode.For the next book club episode, make sure that you have read the next three chapters.
That's chapters seven, eight, and nine.If you own a different copy of the book than us, though, make sure you read through the chapter that ends on the sentence, quote, There is no longer any doubt that this child is the one."Neo.
Yeah, it's actually a scene within a scene.It's just actually talking about Keanu Reeves.It's the Oracle in Morpheus.It's the Oracle.
Now, before we let you go, as always, at the end of the episode, a couple of very quick reminders.
The first is how to support us.And of course, the best way to support us is to become a patron, patreon.com forward slash Gamjabar, or to get yourself some new Dune themed swag from our merch store.Those links are in our show notes.Take a look.
Take a look. And of course, we love to hear from you.So email us at gomtrabarpodcast.gmail.com.Send us your thoughts on Heretics of Dune as you read along with us.
Of course, send us your questions for future Mailbag episodes that we'll try to answer, or you might just respond to your email and answer.And please, please, please, please. We need a palate cleanser after this whole chair dog mess.
Send us cute pictures of your pets that aren't chairs.OK, just regular dogs and regular cats and regular little critters.We'd love to see them.Come to our podcast at gmail.com is the place.
Indeed it is. So anyway, now that we've kind of finished recording, I think both of us should probably shower, because it feels like we've been talking about poindos, and I know that that's not being among them, but... Yeah, no, I agree.
I always have a post-recording shower ritual to cleanse myself of the podcast.
So when people say, how are you doing, you can talk about anything else.
It's just... Right, exactly.I have to turn the dune brain off.
The fact that I have, I have coworkers who don't know that I have a Dune podcast.Like, can you believe that?It's just wild.
It's so rude of them, honestly.
It's a failure on their part.
Those fucking Powindos, you know?
Those non-Gamjabar listening Powindos.
Yeah, they're not part of our Cal.The Yekt of Wondola doesn't contain them.
Oh, totally.I mean, you're my Malik brother, you know?Yeah.You and I, we're on this lush car together, baby.
Did you just scroll down to the bookshelf? You know, I'll see you at the cell I'm like, right?
Oh, just don't make eye contact.
It's weird.It's weird if we do that.Don't even acknowledge me, actually.And you know what?Keep your Kalat robe on.Okay.Yeah.Just keep the Kalat robe on.I don't want to see too much.
Yeah.You can tell what's happening, but it's the monochrome of Monastir.
That's right.That's right.And you know what?Don't get in a fight with the Kassadar this time.All right.
The guy's just trying to do his job.They just rubbed me the wrong way.I mean, are they even Bondalongian? I feel like they're from some other fucking city, you know?
Well, friends, there is no real ending.It's just the place where you stop the recording.But this podcast is always one step beyond logic.So help spread the word of Muad'Dib and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
And be sure to check out the other shows on the Lore Party podcast network on loreparty.com.You can also follow us on Twitter and Instagram at lore underscore party.We're also on TikTok at Comjabar podcast.Thank you so much for listening.
And remember, whoever controls the podcast controls the universe.We'll see you on the golden path.
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