Impatient to be bored. Or...Continuing an Abomination?
I've finished transcribing the recording of Chapter 1 of Sandworms of Dune. Thank Dur it was only nine minutes!
No...not even close. But at several points I was reminded of the rather over-the-top style often used by Japanese voice actors when they want to make sure the audience knows a foreigner is speaking, even though the words are in Japanese.
But this will look good on the ole CV, won't it?
That's two years after the beginning of the last part of Hunters. I'm surprised they didn't come right out and state that in the text. Dur knows they take such pains to make it clear WHEN we are otherwise. (The God Emperor's reign lasted 3,500 years after Muad'Dib. It's now 1,500 years, plus a few more, after that. And Duncan, "Eternal Duncan", doesn't look a day over...his age. But he's "concealing [it] well". The "dark, wiry hair" bit gives it away: Duncan's had a dye-and-do. Shades of Dirk Bogarde in Death in Venice! Eew. I guess it's a good thing Duncan had his "maritime collison" with Shee-Anna...else Tegzio might have to watch his ass.)
Oh, what to say about this? It's certainly an inauspcious beginning. And Kevin was right: the style hasn't changed. Of the 1,334 words, I wonder how much would remain if you edit out all the recap? Well, let's see.
First, let's get rid of the epigraph. Another piece of truly insipid filler that adds no information. (How can you really miss something you don't remember except second-hand?) Snip. Get rid of "wandering" as a modifier of the no-ship; we "no" that. Snip the reminder of Jessica's age...if we really care we can do the math ourselves. If you've been told that someone is a "Bene Gesserit Suk doctor", you don't need to be told a few lines later that that person is "female". Snip. Likewise "grown from preserved cells"; we know what a ghola is by now, thank you. Snip. A ghola that is "not itself yet" obviously doesn't have its memories or its pasts, so drop another filler sentence.
We've all read Dune...or we wouldn't be here reading this, right? Many have reread the novel in the last year. So we don't need to be told that Jessica and Paul were on the run, that the Duke was dead, that they took up with the Fremen, who were a desert tribe, how the first Alia came about. We get it, already, dammit. Slash. We remember (from Hunters) that the ghola Paul—remember, Jessica's son, but not the real one, because he's dead, remember?—is a year older than the ghola of his mother, that Paul and Chani had their groove thang on, that Leto II was the result. Snip, snip, snip. Why we have ghola babies in the first place? Snip.
I won't bore you with the rest. At the end, I got rid of 341 words, or about one fourth of the original. Not as high as I had hoped...er, I mean, expected, but still not insignificant.
Probably the worst part of this (and this is just the first chapter?!) is that She-Anna has decided to bring back Alia. But Masta B and I have already touched on this one on comments on earlier posts, so why belabor it? Let's just rubberstamp this one with "WTF?!" and move on.
No, sorry, wait: the worst part is actually that they are also bringing back Serena Butler and Xavier Harkonnen. Oh, yeah, and Gurney Halleck. Nothing like another token FH character.
As I posted over on the DN BBS, I guess She-Anna got tired of playing hide-and-seek with Serena in her own OM. Gholas are much more manageable, obviously, than people-in-memory, I guess.
The Rabbi remains an over-the-top caricature of himself, Yueh is a wishy-washy sallow youth, blah blah blah.
And they get paid for this shite? There's something wrong with the world.
"I am not a professional voice actor."
No...not even close. But at several points I was reminded of the rather over-the-top style often used by Japanese voice actors when they want to make sure the audience knows a foreigner is speaking, even though the words are in Japanese.
But this will look good on the ole CV, won't it?
Twenty-One Years After the Escape from Chapterhouse
That's two years after the beginning of the last part of Hunters. I'm surprised they didn't come right out and state that in the text. Dur knows they take such pains to make it clear WHEN we are otherwise. (The God Emperor's reign lasted 3,500 years after Muad'Dib. It's now 1,500 years, plus a few more, after that. And Duncan, "Eternal Duncan", doesn't look a day over...his age. But he's "concealing [it] well". The "dark, wiry hair" bit gives it away: Duncan's had a dye-and-do. Shades of Dirk Bogarde in Death in Venice! Eew. I guess it's a good thing Duncan had his "maritime collison" with Shee-Anna...else Tegzio might have to watch his ass.)
Oh, what to say about this? It's certainly an inauspcious beginning. And Kevin was right: the style hasn't changed. Of the 1,334 words, I wonder how much would remain if you edit out all the recap? Well, let's see.
First, let's get rid of the epigraph. Another piece of truly insipid filler that adds no information. (How can you really miss something you don't remember except second-hand?) Snip. Get rid of "wandering" as a modifier of the no-ship; we "no" that. Snip the reminder of Jessica's age...if we really care we can do the math ourselves. If you've been told that someone is a "Bene Gesserit Suk doctor", you don't need to be told a few lines later that that person is "female". Snip. Likewise "grown from preserved cells"; we know what a ghola is by now, thank you. Snip. A ghola that is "not itself yet" obviously doesn't have its memories or its pasts, so drop another filler sentence.
We've all read Dune...or we wouldn't be here reading this, right? Many have reread the novel in the last year. So we don't need to be told that Jessica and Paul were on the run, that the Duke was dead, that they took up with the Fremen, who were a desert tribe, how the first Alia came about. We get it, already, dammit. Slash. We remember (from Hunters) that the ghola Paul—remember, Jessica's son, but not the real one, because he's dead, remember?—is a year older than the ghola of his mother, that Paul and Chani had their groove thang on, that Leto II was the result. Snip, snip, snip. Why we have ghola babies in the first place? Snip.
I won't bore you with the rest. At the end, I got rid of 341 words, or about one fourth of the original. Not as high as I had hoped...er, I mean, expected, but still not insignificant.
Abominable
Probably the worst part of this (and this is just the first chapter?!) is that She-Anna has decided to bring back Alia. But Masta B and I have already touched on this one on comments on earlier posts, so why belabor it? Let's just rubberstamp this one with "WTF?!" and move on.
No, sorry, wait: the worst part is actually that they are also bringing back Serena Butler and Xavier Harkonnen. Oh, yeah, and Gurney Halleck. Nothing like another token FH character.
As I posted over on the DN BBS, I guess She-Anna got tired of playing hide-and-seek with Serena in her own OM. Gholas are much more manageable, obviously, than people-in-memory, I guess.
The Rabbi remains an over-the-top caricature of himself, Yueh is a wishy-washy sallow youth, blah blah blah.
And they get paid for this shite? There's something wrong with the world.
posted by SandChigger | 8:33 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home