Kind of made him into a “handsome” version of their communal form but still creepy enough. I really love his character in Messiah so much so I want to make him dateable. This covert warrior assassin on a mission, going to and fro the far reaches of the empire. Wise yet not an elder. Inhuman and unsettling.
The did some sketches of Bijaz and or just a Tleilaxu Master in general. Tried to take influence from Arabian sheik type stuff and hena. I wanted to create a juxtaposition that Scytale is really white, nearly albino, but dresses in black — he is the “basest” of creatures and is impure, is the means by which his masters navigate. Meanwhile the Masters dress in purest white yet have silvery dark skin to mask their secrets from advanced scanners and probing devices.
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no parents: the seemingly paradoxical potential of a eusocial individual
(a rant about biology, philosophy, and various fictional societies from scifi settings)
first things first: when i talk about eusociality i mean it in the core biological sense of the word; it's a reproductive strategy. it's fundamentally about polymorphism within a single species, and the smallest of distinctions necessary is the distinction between reproductive and non-reproductive castes. the "ant queen". the "queen" is not a ruler; it's an egg-laying machine. the queen of a naked molerat burrow-complex holds no more inherent authority over "her" offspring than any other rodent matriarch would. each molerat is an individual. each ant, each termite, each bee, each sponge-symbiote shrimp.
the point im trying to emphasise is that im not talking about hiveminds here!!!
good? good.
^an indidual
now with that out of the way:
-PART ONE: HUMAN APPROXIMATIONS
so, first of, examples of fictional societies of *humans* who switched their mode of reproduction to something akin or close to the eusocial "worker, queen, drone" template, though again, not all pieces are needed to "count"
1a: brave new world
starting off with an old scifi classic! BNW's society is interesting in just how it walks the tightrope between dystopia and utopia; to steal the term from isaac arthur, it's "post-discontent". every single individual is fully and completely human current day baseline-standards; a mortician wouldn't see a single strange thing about them. but they're all purpose *grown*. production-line wise, "our fordship be with us". it's production. no parents. all are free to do what they want. and they were made to do what they were made for. it's the culmination of a well-intentioned dream of fulfillment and efficiency.
the one factor to keep in mind is that technically speaking, *everyone* is still potentially reproductive. not in the mammalian reproduction way, but in the gene-donor for the hatcheries way. this detail does little to detract from the eusocial structure of the society.
individual-potential, there's actually very little to say! the entire thing is genuinely just shockingy *healthy* for each individual. and there are outliers! and there's also contingencies for outliers that are beneficial to said outliers. the new world does not limit. that would be cruel. and it is never cruel. the issue some of the outliers have is that it's *too* kind, in fact!
1b: tleilaxu
in contrast, the tleilaxu from the dune universe follow the structure of a eusocial organism almost to the letter. *almost*.
they're curious in how their incredible feats of society-shaping and biotechnology are all made in service to what ultimately amounts to an extreme form of fundamentalist zealotry. the culmination of the ultimate religious misogyny: "all tleilaxu women are queens", which, in the eusocial terminology, means they exist solely for reproduction.
on top of this, the majority of the tleilaxu population consists of completely sterile "face dancers" who are on the one hand still fully *people*, but simultaneously completely beholden to the orders of their masters on an instinctive level. orders given not in spoken language, but a complex inherent system of whistles and chemicals. like the pheromone trails of ants but more detailed.
and then there's the "masters". the *other* reproductive caste. they too are genetically modified to hell and back but on top of this keep simply regrowing themselves, in a twisted approximation of immortality. the ever-reborn rulers of their army of "growth tanks" and disposable face-dancer servants.
dune doesn't need aliens; given enough time to diverge, any human can become an alien.
and no individual can be an individual here. not at first at least. because there are still parents. the masters spoil the potential. they should've died long ago.
1c: krieg
yes, that krieg. from warhammer 40k. the trench WW1-larper guys. *insert shovel joke here*
but there's something there!
krieg is strange. you could argue the vita-womb born soldiers of the bombed-out shell of a hiveworld that is war-in-german are no different from say, clone troopers in star wars. except there's a massive difference under the hood; *krieg made and makes itself*. it's a society. the regiments of krieg are conscripted, sure, but they always send more than asked. they'd go out there unasked. they weren't made on order. they're a culture. a very distinct and purposeful one. and they no longer have the concept of a parent. a ruler, yes. a god too, in the great god-emperor of mankind. but each individual in the ranks of the underground cities of krieg is an individual. no parents, not an orphan.
^one of the happiest people in the imperium, somehow
and an added quirk of krieg is the fact it's a eusocial outlier in an otherwise very much reproductively baseline greater imperium (give or take whatever goes on with servitors and on some forge worlds). which is something i genuinely know no other examples of in fiction (if you do let me know please!)
-PART TWO: INTRINSIC EUSOCIALITY (IT'S JUST HOMESTUCK AND VAST ERROR BUT TRUST ME ON THIS ONE)
you all knew this was coming! troll-time baby!
-2a: alternia
to understand troll reproduction i will *not* be going into quadrants; because funnily enough, interactions and relationships between individual *trolls* doesn't mean much for the complete picture. because trolls, funnily enough, occupy the same part of the "triangle" of eusocial phenotypes as the tleilaxu masters. not queens, not workers, but drones. (except troll workers are called drones because terminology is never straigth-forward!). or more accurately, 3 trolls are 1 drone, reproductively speaking.
that also explains the rampant intraspecific violence and other r-selected traits that seem out of place for a eusocial species, which are normally very good at caring for their offspring. except this does happen: to drones! because troll society is run *by drones* trolls fight and squabble and invent and the entire society and quite possibly troll sentience itself is a result of this rampant competition and sexual selection. ultra-individualists with no parents. a lusus isn't a parent, it doesn't have *expectations* beyond affection and food (though that last one can in itself be a huge issue: see spidermom and gl'golyb). but not a parent. a hive is a home. and ironically the straightforward stable ancient cruelty of alternia, though filled with mundane dread, is mercifully bereft of most existential dread. as is fitting for a society that evolved sapience in a post-scarcity environment.
almost the most individualistic eusocial society imaginable. almost.
(-2a*: beforus)
similar to alternia except in that past initial culling in the brood caverns the intraspecific violence is kept to an absolute minimu at the cost of very strong and paternalistic control. objectively a better place to live but it has a lot of issues and is arguably worse mentally for most. (beforus too has *issues*, they're just less in your face than alternia's, which is in itself part of the larger issue)
-2b: repiton
and at last, repiton my beloved outlier that does things to my perception and lives in my thinkpan rent-free, not that i ever ask rent.
repiton of the upside-down uncanny valley. the ex-post-scarcity society of eusocials keeping themselves going with mother grubs. without drones. ony trolls and almost-cloning. a species on permanent life-support. such an odd outlier, almost reminiscent of brave new world, but they got where they are from the other side of the growth tanks. the humans of brave new world could always go back to mammalian reproduction within a single generation, but the mother grubs are *gone*. it's barely eusocial at all anymore, just the remnants of it.
crumbled to the feudal ancap wasteland of desperation pretending to be freedom. the malaise of borrowed time.
end
im sorry i have no conclusion, only pent-up thoughts i wanted to share.
about brave new world and repiton as mirrors, written almost a century apart.
about krieg as the philosophically fascinating outlier it is.
about the difference between parent and lusus, and why i wish i grew up with the latter.
and about why a hivemind sucks all the interesting parts out of eusociality as a concept.
thanks to the single-digit amount of people reading all the way to the end.
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'How little you understand our masters, the Tleilaxu. The Guild and Bene Gesserit believe we produce artifacts. In reality, we produce tools and services. Anything can be a tool - poverty, war.
War is useful because it is effective in so many areas. It stimulates the metabolism. It enforces government. It diffuses genetic strains. It possesses a vitality such as nothing else in the universe. Only those who recognise the value of war and exercise it have any degree of self-determination.
I have a theory/prediction about DUNE 2 - dont read any further if u dont want possible spoilers-
that the baron's mentat will be brought back as a ghola. He might even have eyes that are discernably synthetic. Without Piter, the Baron might end up having to tell us stuff in long winded exposition; talking to Piter is much more efficient. Plus it would be a great way to introduce the Bene Tleilaxu & their technology to audiences. Also, it wd be a great way to introduce the concept of replacement organs.
Feel free to tell me why I am wrong , in the comments 😅. (Pl dont put spoilery things in reblogs - we dont want to ruin the series for people who hvnt read the books yet)
