Shelobs, worms (or wombs), and noodles

[oyceter]

After dropping Yoon off, Rachel drove up and we all had dinner in San Gabriel, home to the giant Chinese strip malls. As I commented, I think it's larger than the Chinese strip malls in three separate Bay Area cities combined. Though the restaurant Rachel was looking for seemed to have disappeared, we ended up getting noodles (and sausages and sticky rice) at Ah Tsong Noodles, which is a famous noodle place from Taiwan (here and here). Though we managed to go to Aji Ichiban and get chocolate-covered sunflower seeds, prunes, and preserved rose petals (amazingly tasty), it was too late to visit the massive CD/DVD store to look for kdramas.

Rachel and I then headed back and decided it was too late to watch any crack. So instead, I went to browse her manga shelves when we discovered.... a giant spider on the wall!

Well, it was not as giant as some of the monsters in Taiwan, which are as large as my hand, but it was still pretty freaking huge. And worse, it was lurking right above Flower of Life! Rachel bravely dashed in to rescue the manga as I kept an eye on the evil spider, which retaliated by crawling toward us. We both gave girly shrieks and ran out, closing the door behind us.

Then, instead of reading the manga Rachel had risked life and limb (er, or possibility of falling spider) to retrieve, I went through her Gundam Wing doujinshi! There is one with a pink sparkly cover, and when I flipped it open, I was traumatized to find Duo, clad in bunny ears, hot pants that did not even cover all of his ass, and a bunny tail. After that, I translated the one in which Duo is a werewolf. It is an AU. You can tell it is an AU because it has a giant toothed sandworm leaping out of the desert.

Rachel then regaled me with the plot of book 3 and 4 of Dune, which I never made it through because it was so incomprehensible. We both agreed that the scene with Alia fighting naked and Duncan watching was very sexy, even though Herbert never fulfilled the promise of Alia's awesomeness, and then Rachel told me about Leto's grand plan to make himself immortal by clothing himself in thousands of worms and then becoming a giant worm himself.

I feel I would rather give up on immortality if I had to spend it as a giant worm! Oh! And if anyone else remembers what happens in books 3 through eleventy billion of Dune, do spill in the comments! I will never read them, and I want to know.

Anyway, the doujinshi! I was very grateful when the worm appeared, as there had been a puzzling katakana phrase ("u(o)-mu"). "Womb?" I asked as Rachel snorfled. "Please tell me I am wrong, because I have no wish to see flying wombs in the desert!"

"And yet, it would be so appropriate for Angel Sanctuary," she said. As are so many things!

ETA: possible spoilers for Dune (all books) in the comments

Comments

[helen-keeble.livejournal.com]

Dune! The cracktastic portentiousness!

Leto II does indeed cover himself with (immature) sandworms and becomes a giant sandworm with a teeny human face, which takes something like 5,000 years, during which he amuses himself by reforming the galaxy, becoming the God-Emperor of all mankind, and endlessly cloning Duncan. IIRC, he has various handmaidens? wives? at different points, but really? Leto is all about the Duncans. The serial Duncans have a distressing tendency to self-destruct, attempt to kill Leto, or go insane. One would think this might be a hint to Leto that he should stop cloning them, but no.

By the time the third books starts, Arrakis has been terraformed into a lovely garden, the last few descendents of Leto's twin (?) sister - now looong dead, as she inexplicably declined to cover herself in worms - all hate Leto's guts and are trying to overthrow him, and the Bene Gesserit, Space Navigators, and whoever-the-unpronouncable-gene-modifiers-are are all plotting. I can't remember what, just general plotting. IIRC, one of the plotters is a genetically engineered asexual shapeshifter, which is random but cool. Our viewpoint character on all these shenanigans is Duncan Number 10384920183.4, who is conveniently as clueless as the reader on everything and can just wander around being infodumped at.

We also periodically spend time in Leto's point-of-view, whenever Herbert wants to say something particularly profound and portentious about humanity.

There's some girl, who Leto falls in love with. There are hilarious scenes of angst in which we are treated to the sight of a giant worm romancing a woman under the silvery moon. It is very unconvincing, because it has already been established that Leto is all about the Duncan.

In the end all the plotters manage to blow up a bridge that Leto's hovercar is crossing. For some reason that escapes me, Leto's hovercar fails to hover, and he plummets to a watery grave along with his new bride. But not Duncan, because Herbert - I mean, Leto - has a thing about Duncan.

But! Leto is not really dead, for when he hits the water he splits apart into a million baby sandworms, all with a tiny unconscious seed of his personality. And Leto knew that the whole thing was going to happen - that's precog for you - and it was all part of his cunning plan to civilize humanity by taking the spice away, but then stop them getting to decadent by breaking up his own empire and forcing a massive expansion, powered by the once-again available spice, produced by all the little baby Leto-worms.

(oh, I nearly forgot - Leto has an awesomely cool personal army composed entirely of women, called the Fish Speakers, because he views male armies as a threat to civilian populations. At one point Duncan is comprehensively pwned by the Fish Speakers, who kindly inform him that he is 5,000 years out of date and an inferior model of humanity)

And then we get to book 4, which is something like 5,000 years into the future _again_, but in which they are still cloning Duncan. Evil temple prostitutes return from other galaxies and attempt to take over civilisation with their evil sex magic, but Duncan Number 34523052093548230223490 manages to stop them by becoming a kind of cross between Superman and Jesus.

I think there is a book 5 as well, which I haven't read, but it is a pretty safe bet that it involves a Duncan.

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

I always saw the Duncuns as Herbert's Mary Sue character after the initial Dune book.

[oyceter]

I... can see how this would be! When I was reading book 2, I was really confused as to how it got to be All About Duncan instead of the Atreides, but I see now that I only hit the tip of the iceberg.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

One would think this might be a hint to Leto that he should stop cloning them, but no.

I suppose after 5,000 years you feel obligated to get it right.

Are the Fish Speakers somehow named after the old 'fish needs a bicycle' joke? Because that would be awesome.

[helen-keeble.livejournal.com]

I have realised that I've miscounted the books - God Emperor of Dune, aka Sandworms In Love, is book 3, and Heretics of Dune, aka They Keep Cloning Duncan, is book 4. There is a book 5, Chapterhouse Dune, which I note does indeed contain a Duncan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapterhouse_Dune))

There's something in God Emperor of Dune about the Fish Speakers being named after some sort of oracular tradition where women would dream of fish, but I have no idea whether Herbert was making that up out of thin air or not. I like your explanation better.

[helen-keeble.livejournal.com]

*sigh* In comment above, please add +1 to all numbers. Evidently my brain _really_ doesn't want to acknowledge the existence of Dune Messiah.

[oyceter]

I should say more, but all I have is: BWAHAHAHAHA!

and: Best Summary Ever!

[helen-keeble.livejournal.com]

Looking over Wikipedia, I have realised that I have conflated Duncan with another character, Miles Vorkosigan Teg. It is Teg who becomes Superman after an interesting encounter with a torture device. Duncan merely saves the entire universe through incredible mind-blowing sex.

IIRC, both of these things are explained away by Atreides genetics. That Paul Muad'Dib has a lot to answer for.

[oyceter]

Duncan merely saves the entire universe through incredible mind-blowing sex.

As one does!

OMG this should so be an anime like you say! It would be made of win!

[veejane.livejournal.com]

You have got a bit of the craxxy of the later Dune novels. A bit more of it (#5 and 6): after the whole wormapalooza death of Leto, the empire has a big crazy... as one does, upon the death of one's 3000-year emperor. There is no reliable source of spice; there is no certainty about space navigation; lots and lots of people die and have wars and I don't know what all; lots and lots of people say "fuck this" and flee to the stars.

That is backstory.

Then we open up with yet another Duncan, this one a teenager for just that Mary Sue flavor, several hundred years later. The empire has been kinda winding down for a long time; everybody's all Old World Tired Europeans; blah blah ideology argument blah; and then!

Orange-eyed ninja women from spaaaaace! Who are presumed to be the Lost People What Fled ages ago, and wherever the hell they went they became ninja women! And I don't even remember what else except the ninjadom. Possibly they were also enlightened. Needless to say, everyone is very disconcerted, and in the end, Duncan must have sex with one of them in order for the universe to re-order itself and reconcile the old with the new. Also there is dancing on the sand, by a woman not named Rio.

NO I AM NOT KIDDING.

Basically, the moral of the story is, if you live in late-Renaissance Venice, and are bored out of your skull, don't worry, because very soon your city-state will self-destruct, sending its best and brightest to become better and brighter in America, whence they will return to kick everloving ass. And then you can have sex with them!

Repeat: NO I AM NOT KIDDING.

[oyceter]

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

Wow. Almost, this tempts me to read them, but not really.

[helen-keeble.livejournal.com]

Thing is, there are actually lots and lots of really neat individual scenes in the Dune series. Herbert _was_ very good at writing compelling description.

It's just that, added together, it is an ENORMOUS PILE OF CRACK.

...

My god. I just had a vision of Dune: The Anime. Made by the same people who did Gundam Wing.

[helen-keeble.livejournal.com]

That analogy to Venice is all kinds of awesome. Never considered reading the Dune books through that lens.

(mainly because, by the time I got to Heretics of Dune, I was incapable of doing anything other than boggling at the orange-eyed evil ninja women from spaaaaace (though I recall them as being evil temple prostitutes rather than ninja. Maybe they were both). And, OMG, the dancing on the sand! I had entirely blanked that subplot from my memory until now!)