#asoiaf and dune

[benevolentfalcon]

Most sci fi/fantasy: this civil war has been waged for a thousand years. These great houses have ruled the realm for eight thousand years. These two families have been feuding for ten thousand years. This single political institution has stood for twenty-five thousand years.

Animorphs: there is a war waged across the galaxy, waged by countless species. Entire planets have been conquered, entire species have been enslaved. Multiple genocides have been committed, even by the "good guys." It's been going on about, oh, thirty-two years now.

[irlplasticlamb]

i must not fear. fear is the mind-killer.

prints + merch

[franzkafkagf]

PAUL ATREIDES & MAEGOR TARGARYEN – ON POWER, MOTHERS, DESTINY AND COMING BACK WRONG

pet sematary – stephen king / fire & blood artwork – doug wheatley / dune: part two – denis villeneuve / dune – denis villeneuve / came back wrong / dune – frank herbert / fire & blood – george r. r. martin / on visenya targaryen / dune: messiah – frank herbert

[catofoldstones]

we already have people bitching about how “i can’t stand Chani, she’s so annoying 🙄” and “Paul chose Chani to be the mother of his children, Irulan is just at the sidelines eating dust as she should”, like brothers we cannot do this again. We can’t Chani v Irulan our way out of this one because the problem is Paul and the Empire. Gosh, we truly are never getting out of the patriarchy.

[loveakii]

a game of thrones + dune

[novaursa]

Of Gods and Men Masterlist

This is Dune/GOT/HOTD/FAB/ASOIAF crossover AU that you've voted for. If you always wanted to see House Targaryen in space, I got you. Please note how some of the lore of both universes is bent to blend in both worlds. This is my original idea that I've been cooking for at least two years. Be gentle with my work, and enjoy the ride.

planetary and technological information

- Albrion

- Targaryen Spaceships

- Targaryen Ornithopters

- Targaryen Harvesters

(more info will be added with time)

the book I: of gods and men chapters

- introduction: the exodus

- part one: contact

- part two: daenys

- part three: the gift

- part four: resurgence

- part five: hope

- part six: dreams

- part seven: horizon

- part eight: titans

- part nine: daybreak

- part ten: conventat

- part eleven: god killer

- part twelve: the path

- part thirteen: destiny

(the book II and more parts will be added with time)

[dedalvs]

We're at it again! Kopikon II is happening at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland on October 10th, 2025! Come for some more conlang fun, and to celebrate the publication of Jessie Peterson's new book How to Create a Language: The Conlang Guide. We'll have the following speakers:

Jessie Peterson

David Peterson

Biblaridion

Jake Penny

Keras Saryan

We hope you can make it! This will be Jessie's first trip to Scotland and my second. I hope to meet up again with some of the friends I made the first time I was there. :)

[fadingstudentbananacookie]

House of the Dragon Dune: Part 2 by Denis Villeneuve

[pessimisticpigeonsworld]

I saw a tiktok comparing Paul Atreides to Daenerys and it made me want to gouge out my eyes and break my phone.

I just don't understand how Dany and Paul are comparable in any way. For one thing, Dany's ending in GOT only happened because of bad writing. There's no foreshadowing, no buildup, or reason for her fall.

Disclaimer: I haven't actually read the Dune books yet, just watched the movies and read Wikipedia stuff. So anyone who has read Dune, please please please correct me if I'm misunderstanding things.

From what I saw in the movies and read from secondhand sources, Paul was never meant to be a hero. Sure, he was a good kid, but his arc isn't that of a fallen hero. The moment Paul chose to exploit the fremen and the Bene Gesserit's false prophecy, he solidified himself as anything but a hero. He was set on vengeance and survival.

Paul is a fascinating character, but he's not a hero in any way, and wasn't at any point in his story (to my understanding).

Dany is a hero, whether you like it or not. From book/season one, she's been protecting those weaker than her to the best of her ability. She sacrifices her own desires and ambitions for the sake of others.

...this Mother of Dragons, this Breaker of Chains, is above all a rescuer. (ADWD - Tyrion VI)

Dany chooses to prioritize the innocent and the oppressed in her mission. Paul chooses to lead a holy war that will kill billions of innocents.

They're not comparable characters, because they're very different archetypes and communicate very different things from the authors. Dany is an underdog and someone who fights for justice while maintaining her gentleness. Paul is someone who basically embodies "for the greater good", sacrificing billions for the future.

Dany is written to be a hero, Paul is not. Dany is only turned from being a hero because of bad writing and sexism. Paul's descent is well written and clearly foreshadowed. Paul's story is what D&D wanted to gaslight the viewers into believing Dany's was. Unfortunately, that seems to have worked for certain parts of this fandom. Also, the poster had a Sansa pfp, so I think it's easy to tell why they view Dany this way.

Paul and Dany's characters aren't even in the same ballpark as each other. Comparing them is stupid.

[baelontargaryen]

daenerys isn’t the “paul atreides of asoiaf” grrm was never inspired by dune nor has he ever stated it was an influence on his writing for the series

when asked for opinion on frank herbert’s dune books he respected it as “classic work” but clearly wasn’t the biggest fan of them

[awakeagainstmywill]

If Lord of the Rings and Dune had a love child. And that child grew up to become its own independent person.

That's Wheel of Time.

[fruitageoforanges]

my favourite heads of the dragon from dunk & egg —

baelor breakspear - honestly one of the most level-headed targs, though i suspect that’s just because he takes wholly after myriah. the moment with the war vs. tourney lances was epic for a jousting nerd like me, and his death is iconic, if disgusting and maybe not even medically possible.

prince valarr - idk, i just think he’s neat. he gets barely any page time, but what he does have is interesting, and i loved what he said to duncan after baelor’s death, because it shows how things that are good for protagonists aren’t, and shouldn’t be, always good for everyone else.

john the fiddler/daemon ii blackfyre - i have a precedent for liking dragon dreamers, so it’s unsurprising that daemon is my boy. he just wanted to be gay, fiddle (with duncan) and serve cunt, but somehow got caught up in his own rebellion. i really hope the rest of his life was spent as shiera seastar’s gay little purse-dog.

[transdimensional-void]

Interesting parallels between Dany, Jon and Paul. I have seen some posts about how Paul and Dany being the 'white saviours' in their arc. What do you think?

glad you found my answer to this question interesting!

i actually highly recommend this princess weekes youtube video titled "Why Sci-fi & Fantasy Can't Fix Its White Savior Problem." she delves into the entire topic of white saviors in speculative fiction while discussing how paul and dany both fit into the trope.

as she discusses in the video (and clarifies further in a comment below it), paul atreides was always meant to be a deconstruction of the archetypical hero. (if you want to delve even more deeply into paul as "hero" i suggest this video by Jess of the Shire). in fact, it's quite clearly stated within the text of dune itself that paul being a "hero" is a bad thing for the fremen. as he lies dying, the planetary ecologist liet-kynes, who has dedicated his life to helping the fremen terraform their planet, hallucinates a conversation with his father in which his father warns him:

"No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero," his father said. Reading my mind! Kynes thought. Well...let him.

and over the course of the series, this warning is borne out. in the wake of paul's ascension to the throne, the fremen way of life utterly disappears. their planet, now the capital of the empire, no longer belongs to them. the sandworms—their gods—disappear. fremen culture is eventually reduced to museum performances for tourists.

paul is even explicitly shown to be a false messiah. the prophecy that tells the fremen of their coming savior was planted by a branch of the bene gesserit called the missionaria protectiva. jessica, a bene gesserit, recognizes the signs of this when she first arrives on arrakis and later takes advantage of the groundwork her sisterhood laid to ensure that she and paul will be accepted among the fremen.

but what makes paul a tragic figure is that the moment he becomes aware of the path he is being lead down—to become this figure of prophecy, a hero, a messiah—he tries to resist it. yet he is trapped, by the deterministic prison of his own prophetic visions, by the millennia of planning and manipulations carried out by the bene gesserit which led to his birth, and by his own thirst for vengeance. also, he's only fifteen when he is asked to take on this mantle of hero-messiah-prophesied savior.

paul's failure to avert the devastating genocide that is carried out in his name is tragic...yet it doesn't make him any less responsible for his own decisions. he could have given up on vengeance, settled down among the fremen, and lived the rest of his life in obscurity—but he chose not to.

i think grrm has set dany on a similarly tragic path. she's so young, has experienced such massive loss, is the result of generations of intentional inbreeding to maintain her family's connection to magic, and when we first meet her, all she wants is a home, love, and security—things she has never had. despite all of these factors that make her a sympathetic character, though, dany is no less responsible for her own decisions than paul is for his.

her actions lead to ever increasing amounts of death and destruction. first, the lhazarene, then the people of slaver's bay, and probably, eventually, king's landing and other areas of westeros. she positions herself as a savior who is ending slavery and establishing a better, more benevolent form of government in astapor, yunkai, and meereen. yet, astapor is left in a state of utter ruin and devastation after dany's sacking of it. no one there is better off as a result of her actions. yunkai goes straight back to its slaving once she leaves, and she herself reimplements slavery in meereen as its queen. by the end of adwd, she's decided to abandon meereen like she did astapor and yunkai, so we can assume it will suffer a similar fate.

dany, like paul, is clearly meant to be a deconstruction of the white savior trope. in her own mind, she is a savior of the foreign cultures she invades and conquers (also note how similar her title "mhysa" is to "messiah"). yet the reality is that she has brought little to the people of slaver's bay other than death and destruction. and once she gets to westeros, who, exactly, will she be saving? westeros has no slavery. marching her armies and dragons in to claim the iron throne will be hard to spin as an act of benevolence rather than of conquest.

that being said...

as princess weekes points out in the video above, while the authors intended these two characters to be deconstructions of the white savior trope, the execution leaves something to be desired...because in both the case of paul and dany, there are large numbers of readers who take their claims of heroism at surface value, see them as straightforward heroes, and applaud their actions. they miss the context of them each being outsiders highjacking a foreign culture for their own ends. in some cases, the very types of people these depictions are most meant to criticize, are the exact same people who hold up these characters as their ideal...

so, are paul and dany "white saviors"? well...a lot of readers genuinely read them that way, even if that's not what the authors intended.

thanks for your question! i really enjoyed being able to discuss this topic.

[perseusnot]

hii, my name is mel, i’m currently learning italian🇮🇹and looking for some italian friends (that sounds kind of weird ahaha) that could maybe help me in my journey, in exchange I can help with english or latvian if you’d like :)

here’s a bit about me:

• a small list of fandoms I am in - marauders, asoiaf, voltron, percy jackson, dune, etc.

• I like playing video games (assassin’s creed, minecraft, red dead redemption, terraria, hades)

• I watch movies and read books every so often

• I’m fluent in 2 languages and am currently learning 2

• nico di angelo and regulus black🙏🙏

(p.s. you don’t have to be italian to be friends!!! very happy to also make non-italian speaking friends:))

[maxdibert]

The most annoying thing about HOTD is that the book versions of Alicent and Rhaenyra are not at all the show’s clueless peace loving ladies constantly horrified at the violence of the men around them. Book Alicent knows from the second she gives birth to a son that she either puts him on the throne or her whole family dies, and schemes accordingly. Book Rhaenyra has absolutely zero intention of doing the sensible thing and backing down on her right to rule in order to avoid dragon civil war. Soon enough they’re all-in on inflicting maximum harm to each other for revenge. The show has neutered them both to the point of uselessness. Alicent should’ve been an iconic as Cersei!

It’s such a shame how female characters are treated in that franchise when it comes to TV adaptations. And it surprises me because HBO has other incredible series with amazing female characters. Look at Dune: The Sisterhood Prophecy or The Penguin, for example. Sofia Falcone was a fantastic discovery—her character was so well-developed, and at no point was she reduced to being pathologized or judged by the narrative as the stereotypical "woman who can’t control her emotions/manage her anger." It was a joy to see her in every episode. HBO is also responsible for adapting My Brilliant Friend, based on the Italian series of novels whose protagonists might be two of the most intense, complex, and tumultuous female characters I’ve ever read about. It’s literally one of my favorite sagas and a stunning portrayal of the social, political, cultural, psychological, sexual, and emotional violence women endure. A masterpiece, honestly. And the adaptation? Absolutely brilliant. I’ve genuinely cried over how incredibly well-made it is. Even though it can’t cover everything the books delve into, the screenplay perfectly captures the essence of every significant moment. It’s a work of art in its own right.

I don’t know if it’s something tied to the executive producers, but I haven’t read House of the Dragon yet, although I have read A Song of Ice and Fire. And literally all the women lose so much in their adaptation to the screen. Especially in the later seasons—it’s an absolute disaster in terms of how they handle the most important female characters. Apart from Sansa, every other character spirals downhill compared to their book versions.

It fascinates me that Martin writes such complex, morally gray female characters and gives the screenwriters so much to work with, yet they completely drop the ball. It’s honestly infuriating.